“We the youths of Nigeria, we are tired,” Chioma Igboagui, 24, told me in front of the Lagos State House of Assembly, where hundreds of thousands of Nigerian protesters have gathered daily in the past two weeks demanding an end to police brutality and bad governance.

Like dozens of young protesters I have spoken to since the agitations began in early October, Igboagui was visibly angry that the country’s political leadership had not acted on countless reported cases of abuse, torture and extortion by officers of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) – a unit of the Nigeria Police Service – and in spite of multiple and mounting evidence.

In recent years, SARS operatives have routinely profiled young people based on how they dressed, the cars they drove or the phones they used, suspecting that they must be fraudsters.

The more stylish the youngster looked, the more likely they would be pulled over for a stop-and-search operation, which usually ended in a demand for bribe.

These unchecked excesses pushed the youths to the wall, literally; and the collective frustration coalesced into a peaceful protest that lasted two weeks before it was brutally terminated on Tuesday, 20 October.

Just before dusk on Tuesday, Nigerian soldiers shot repeatedly into a crowd of unarmed youths waving the country’s flag and singing the national anthem at the Lekki toll gate, located in a highbrow area of Lagos State, Nigeria’s business capital.

In the chaos that followed, several were wounded. Images and videos uploaded on social media shocked the entire country and have drawn criticism from leaders and influencers across the world, including the United Nations.

Amnesty International announced that at least a dozen had been killed that night but was convinced that the tally would be much higher.

While state and federal officials deny knowledge of who ordered the shooting, the youths, though broken, say they stand by their cause.

“This is still a peaceful protest,” another protester told me the previous morning. “The police are still brutalizing innocent youths. We need them to end this SARS and end this corruption. We are not just protesting – we are protesting for the next generation to come. Enough is enough.”

The youths are not alone in this struggle. Nigerians across all social, ethnic and religious divides have showed their support for these demands.

Everyone, it seems, is tired of living in poverty in their own country while a handful of politicians enrich themselves corruptly with the commonwealth, 60 years after its independence from Great Britain.

No protests in recent history have galvanized this much widespread solidarity than that convened to #EndSARS.

The atmosphere is still tense all over the country. Among other things, Nigerians are calling for the service chiefs and the Inspector General of Police to be sacked and that president Muhammadu Buhari make a national broadcast urgently.

While nobody can say for certain what will happen in the days and weeks ahead, protests continue in other cities as state and federal officials call for calm.

“The pain of these terrible events is palpable in our towns and cities, and some losses are irreplaceable, but we can get justice for all of them,” vice president Yemi Osinbajo promised in a series of tweets posted around midnight today.

“I stand with Lagos [and] all other affected states in these trying times.”

Awofeso is a freelance journalist based in Lagos. He writes mostly about the arts, culture and travel