Afro-fusion star, Burna Boy, at the just-concluded 15th BET Hip-Hop Awards, paid tribute to police brutality victims in Nigeria.
At the awards ceremony which held on Tuesday, October 27, 2020, the Nigerian music star after his performance of Monster You Made, his hit single in which he featured Cold Play‘s Chris Martin, said his performance was dedicated to Nigerians who lost their lives as a result of the brutality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a defunct department of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
“This is for Tiamiyu Kazeem. This is for Kolade Johnson. This is for everyone that has lost their lives at the hands of SARS and all kinds of police brutality. End police brutality now and end profiling,” Burna Boy stated at the end of his performance.
In the song itself, Burna Boy takes issue with 600-plus years of colonialism. In the visuals of Monster You Made, which premiered some weeks ago, the music star makes it plain, with imagery invoking militias.
The video comes along at an eerily prescient moment, with uprisings that seemed to have cooled flaring up once again in the wake of the shooting of peaceful #EndSARS protesters at Lekki Area of Lagos.