Tonight, with videos circulating of a crackdown on peaceful protesters in the heart of Lagos, it's worth looking at why Africa's largest city was brought to a standstill this week by protests against police brutality led by Nigeria's youth https://www.ft.com/content/f1506b4e-dd3b-4249-aa68-2182361476c8

Frustration at the impunity with which the federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad has operated - with widespread allegations of extortion, torture and murder - sparked the #EndSARS hashtag and a movement that spread across Africa's most populous country.

This is what makes what happened at the Lekki tollgate tonight, where witnesses say security forces fired on peaceful protesters, so heartbreaking to so many. To paraphrase my Nigerian Twitter stream: they were brutalized while protesting police brutality.

This is a young country, led by old men, on an economic precipice. It is heading into its second recession in five years. Inflation is rising, oil revenues have plunged, foreign investment has dried up and more than 55% of Nigerians are underemployed or unemployed.

For young people, the figures are even worse, with 63% of people aged 15-34 unemployed and underemployed. Nigeria has a median age of 18 years old, and those young people are frustrated with a country that provides little in the way of civic services or opportunity of any kind.

They are also, as every interview I've done the last couple weeks has made clear, fed up with being harassed and killed by the very people who are supposed to protect them, which is why thousands of them have been taking to the streets.

They've received full-throated support from clergy, big business, celebrities and many politicians. President Muhammadu Buhari last week announced he would dissolve SARS, and the government agreed to enact key police reforms protesters had demanded.

But Nigerians have been here before. The government has agreed to reform SARS multiple times in the last few years. And so the protests have continued, with young people unwilling to settle for promises - demanding concrete results.

Some of the protests have been guided by young, upper class elites - the kind of folks who are rarely politically engaged. Corporate lawyers organize legal aid; startup founders launch fundraisers; rich people funding ambulance services and food and water distribution.

But they have been peopled by the lower class Nigerians who suffer the brunt of all of the indignities that daily life doles out, including police brutality. Tonight at the Lekki tollgate, hundreds and by some estimates thousands of protesters defied a hastily imposed curfew.

These protests have been almost entirely peaceful. Notable exceptions are when armed gangs of men - wielding rods or machetes - have attacked them, or when security forces have cracked down. At least 18 people have died since the protests began two weeks ago.

The state has seemed of two minds - supportive of the right to protest, but edged with a warning that things shouldn't escalate. In recent days several police stations have reportedly been burned down.

The Army last week warned “all subversive elements and troublemakers to desist from such acts as it remains highly committed to defend the country and her democracy at all cost”.

Tonight, WhatsApp groups and Twitter are filled with videos of the tollgate, gunfire crackling in the background, gunshot wounds exposed, and frantic requests for ambulances. Young people broadcast the aftermath on Instagram Live.

Three hours later, the state governor says he has ordered an investigation into the matter. There has been no statement from the federal government.