The Managing Director of the Lekki Concession Company, Abayomi Omomuwasan, has submitted video footage recorded by the company’s surveillance camera on the night of October 20, when soldiers opened fire on #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki tollgate area in Lagos.
He submitted the footage on Tuesday at the 4th sitting of the panel of Inquiry and Restitution set up by the state government to look into the allegations of brutality and high-handedness by personnel of the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
Omomuwasan, however, noted that the surveillance camera stopped recording at about 8:00 pm.
Nearly two weeks after the incident, investigations are still ongoing to determine what really happened at the scene of the peaceful protests and who was responsible for the shootings.
The Nigerian Army has insisted that soldiers did not shoot at the protesters, despite viral videos showing men in military uniform firing the shots.
Although they admitted that soldiers were deployed to ‘restore normalcy’ in the area, the Acting Deputy Director, 81 Division, Army Public Relations, Osoba Olaniyi, in a statement last Tuesday, described reports of a massacre by the officers as “untrue, unfounded, and aimed at causing anarchy in the country”.
Olaniyi also stated that the decision to involve the military was taken by the Lagos State Government after a 24-hour curfew was imposed.
The reports have further been complicated by reports that the surveillance cameras at the tollgate had been removed hours before the shooting of October 20.
It was also widely reported that the lights at the toll gate were switched off minutes before the shooting happened.
The LCC has since come out to deny any involvement or connivance in the incidents.
Although the curfew was to commence at 4:00 pm, but later shifted to commence for 9:00 pm, many were still seen protesting across the state.
At the Lekki Toll Gate which had been one of the major converging points, peaceful and unarmed protesters were also still seen gathered in large numbers at the time.
The situation, however, took a turn for the worse around 7:00 pm when the security operatives stormed the area and started shooting sporadically.
While investigations are ongoing with the panel of inquiry sittings underway, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is, however, yet to confirm the position of the army with regards to who gave the orders.
The sitting started at 11:00 am, with the testimony from Mr Ndukwe Ekekwe.
He said he was randomly arrested by SARS officers on February 16, 2018, without any valid reason, beaten up and then transferred to their office in Ikeja.
Beyond the beating, Ekekwe said he was stabbed at different parts of his body by the officers, and later taken to his shop at Alaba they broke his shop and started auctioning his products.
Thereafter, as he started shouting for help, he said the officers took him up a two-story building and threw him down – an incident which caused him to break his spine.
Although he survived the incident, Ekekwe is now confined to a wheelchair.
He told the panel that he would like to be compensated, as he also lost goods worth N15million.
Last week, another petitioner, Okoli Aguwu, also shared grisly details of his ordeal in the hands of SARS officers.
He said he spent about one and a half months in detention, and he was tortured to the point where he lost two of his teeth.
The panel is expected to bring justice to the victims of police brutality.
