Elizabeth O.
EndSARS: Lagos To Release White Paper On Panel Report Today
The governor in a speech on Tuesday on the Lekki shootings of October 20, 2020, said, “As an administration, are determined that the next steps that will be taken in this process of coming to terms with the events of October 2020, must bring closure to a painful episode in the history of our state, with the release of the White Paper later today.”
A White Paper is a managerial tool for transmitting the decision or position of the government on the report of an administrative or judicial enquiry.
Following the controversy that trailed the shootings of protesters on October 20, 2020, Sanwo-Olu had inaugurated the judicial panel to uncover the truth and the liars about the incident.
After one year of taking testimonies, receiving evidence and awarding compensations, the eight-man Lagos EndSARS panel submitted a 309-page report on Monday, November 15, 2021, with shocking revelations which indicted members of the Nigerian Army and the Nigeria Police Force.
In a leaked report, the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel, which has been hugely vilified and blackmailed in the last 14 days, described the Lekki tollgate incident as a massacre in context, claiming that at least nine persons were killed by security agents when they stormed the Lekki toll gate on October 20, 2020, to disperse the defiant youths protesting against police brutality and extrajudicial killings, PUNCH
- The panel listed 48 names as casualties out of which 22 protesters sustained gunshot injuries, while 15 others were assaulted by soldiers and the police.
- It listed the names of the deceased as Victor Sunday Ibanga, Abuta Solomon, Jide, Olalekan Abideen Ashafa, Olamilekan Ajasa, Kolade Salami, Folorunsho Olabisi, Kenechukwu Ugoh and Nathaniel Solomon. The report also listed Abiodun Adesanya, Ifeanyi Nicholas Eji, Tola and Wisdom as “presumed dead.”
- It stated, “The atrocious maiming and killing of unarmed, helpless and unresisting protesters while sitting on the floor and waving their Nigerian flags and while singing the National Anthem can be equated to a ‘massacre’ in context.”
The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on November 18, 2021, had told United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who was recently on an official visit to Nigeria that the Federal Government was waiting on Lagos State and other state governments to come up with their conclusions.
