Babajide Sanwo-Olu requested the presence of soldiers who allegedly killed peaceful protesters. In 2023, that could decide everything
By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
On November 30, Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, during a live broadcast, asked #EndSARS activists, security officials and ordinary Lagosians to join him for a peace walk. Sanwo-Olu’s offer for a peace walk with key leaders of the youths, including Folarin Falana, popularly called Falz, Seun Kuti, Debo Macaroni and Dele Farotimi, was strategic – an attempt to bring together key actors in the Lekki Tollgate shooting – politicians, security agents and young Nigerians.
The Lagos State Judicial panel of Inquiry had earlier indicted the Army for killing peaceful protesters who were drafted to the scene of the Lekki shooting at the request of the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. The Governor might have thought that a peace walk with some of the hardliners of the #EndSARS movement could calm rising tempers, improve his standing with the youths who have the numbers in any election, especially in Lagos. But the activists rebuffed the gesture, insisting that there couldn’t be peace without justice.
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The panel headed by Justice Doris Okuwobi submitted its report to the Lagos State Governor on November 15. The report accused soldiers of the killing of protesters at Lekki. The findings resonated with the youths who called it revolutionary.
But the Lagos State government later released its White Paper on November 30, rejecting the findings that a massacre took place at the Lekki Tollgate on the night of October 20, 2020, citing inconsistencies. But activists said the reason was politics. They argued that if the White Paper confirmed that a massacre happened in Lekki, Babajide Sanwo-Olu would be blamed for inviting the soldiers. To save face, they rejected the report of a massacre.
In rejecting the report of the massacre, Attorney General of Lagos State Moyosore Onigbanjo, a senior advocate of Nigeria, alleged inconsistencies in the Panel report during an Arise Television interview. He alleged that one Nathaniel Solomon, who featured as a witness, was also listed as one of those killed during the Lekki shooting. How could a dead man testify about his death?
The report indeed listed Nathaniel Solomon as a deceased and a witness. But was this an inconsistency or a likely scribal error?
Nathaniel Solomon lost his brother to the shooting on October 20, 2020, at the Lekki Tollgate. He appeared at the panel to give evidence of that incident.
Some will say that since he bears the same surname as his brother, the likelihood of his first name accidentally displacing that of his brother on the list of dead people was not out of place.
The Attorney General offered another inconsistency, which was the testimony of the key witness of the panel, the Chief Pathologist of Lagos State, Professor John Obafunwa, with the panel’s conclusion that there was a massacre.
According to Obafunwa’s evidence, three bodies were found at Lekki during the EndSARS uprising, and only one died of gunshot injuries. For the Attorney General, how could one death amount to a massacre?
But the context of Obafunwa’s testimony was missing in his presentation.
Obafunwa was summoned to appear before the Judicial Panel in July this year after a publication by the Lagos Coroner asking members of the public whose relatives might be missing about the period of the EndSARS protest, to visit the morgue and check out some 99 bodies deposited there.
The coroner said the bodies were deposited between October 19, 2020, and October 24, 2020, just the period of the Lekki shooting. Could that be the evidence that there was indeed a massacre? The panel invited Professor Obafunwa to clarify.
The pathologists, in his evidence, said only three of those bodies were picked up from Lekki. He added that out of those three, only one died of gunshot wounds.
Analysts have wondered if the security agencies who picked up the bodies and deposited them in the Lagos morgues did not file misleading documentation to cover up the events of October 20, 2020? The truth remains elusive, and the youths see Babajide Sanwo-Olu as the number one suspect in the cover-up. They distrust his White Paper and may not be willing for any kind of engagement, including considering him for re-election when he shows the interest