The fate of the Lagos Judicial panel of Inquiry into the violence that greeted the protests calling for the scrapping of notorious police outfit, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), hangs in the balance this week following weekend’s boycott of proceedings by two representatives of youths and subsequent lack of quorum for sitting.
It is not yet clear if the youths will show up again, but Temitope Majekodunmi and Olorunrinu Oduala, representatives of the youth on the panel, boycotted proceedings to protest the freezing of Oduala’s bank account over alleged sponsorship of the #EndSARS protests. The accounts of Oduala and 18 others were frozen after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) got a court order to do so last week.
Doris Okuwobi, the head of the nine-member panel, disclosed that with the absence of the duo, there was no quorum for sitting.
Many fear that if the boycott continues into the new week, a pall may have cast upon the sitting of the panel.
Said Okuwobi, after testimony could not be taken from an army chief, commanding officer, 65 Battalion of the Nigerian Army, Salisu Bello, appeared on Saturday: “We are confronted with a situation which prevented her from coming. We do not know if the two youth representatives will eventually pull out.
“We do not want a situation where proceedings will go on and it is impugned that with controversy due to a lack of quorum.
“In all matters, we have to wait for them to join us, without them we are handicapped.”
In his statement on oath, Bello, said his men were attacked at Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020, but they did not shoot at protesters.
In the statement, filed before the judicial panel probing the infamous shooting at the Lekki Toll Gate plaza, while protesters were gathered there, Bello denied the report that soldiers killed some persons at the tollgate, noting the protesters were happy to see them.
According to media reports, the army commander added that he personally offered the protesters water and drinks while persuading them to go home.
He said while he was moving towards the Lekki-Ajah Expressway around 6.45pm, he heard gunshots before the tollgate and on coming down he saw that the crowd had turned from peaceful protesters to a mob.
“On getting to the tollgate, I persuaded the crowd to go home and observe the 24-hour curfew declared by the state government. But surprisingly, the hoodlums continued throwing stones, bottles and other dangerous objects at us and were burning tyres,” he said.
“I again fired some blank ammunition upward to scare the hoodlums away. But some protesters who were still at the tollgate sitting down quietly were given water and drinks by me while pleading with them to go home.
“We did not fire at the protesters. Blank ammunition were fired upward to scare the hoodlums from the crowd. Nobody was shot dead at the Lekki tollgate, there was no massacre as claimed. The claim that the military took away dead bodies was not true. The protesters were happy to see us as indicated in some of the video clips of 20th October 2020.”
▪︎ Additional reports by The Punch