Human rights activist and lawyer, Femi Falana has joined the list of concerned Nigerians reacting to the recently released report of the Lagos panel of Inquiry on the events surrounding the EndSARS protest of last October.
It should be recalled that TheNewsBeam reported that the panel, constituted by the Lagos State Government to investigate the events that took place at the popular Lekki Toll Gate on October 20, 2020, had released a report indicting the armed forces of shooting at unarmed protesters.
Prior to the release of the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel report, the Federal and state government had vehemently denied that there was no massacre and insisted that no life was lost when the men of the Nigerian Army stormed the protest ground to disperse protesters.
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Speaking on the Channels Television’s programme, Sunrise Daily, Falana said President Muhammadu Buhari shouldn’t react to the report by the committee just yet.
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He said: “No, not yet; the President made a broadcast last year in 2020 based on the information given to him. I’m sure you are aware that five times, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said nobody was killed. The Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), said those who appeared in Lekki were not Nigerian soldiers but people just put on military uniforms to perpetrate atrocities.
“Even the military denied that (but) it was when the young people who are advanced in technology and who took photographs in the night when the soldiers were shooting, it was at that stage that the military said, ‘Yes, we were shooting, we only shot into the air’.
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“And the panel found that even LAWMA (Lagos State Waste Management Authority) went there to do a clean-up in the night, in the early hours of 21st (of October 2020) so that there would be no trail but by the time the panel visited the scene of the incident they were still able to pick some expired bullets.“The panel painstakingly analysed the evidence of every witness before arriving at the conclusion. So, it is difficult to cover up what happened on that day,” Femi Falana added.