Segun Adeyemi, spokesperson to the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed on Thursday revealed why his boss hasn’t reacted to the report of the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other matters.
Adeyemi who spoke on behalf of the ministry said Alhaji Lai Mohammed is currently out of Nigeria on an official assignment and will soon respond to the alleged report that at least nine persons were confirmed dead at the Lekki toll gate when soldiers stormed the venue to disperse EndSARS protesters on October 20, 2020.
However, Adeyemi did not disclose which country his principal is in at the moment but emphasised that he would soon respond to the judicial report.
According to him, “We are out of the country (Nigeria) on assignment. Expect our response shortly.”
It could be recalled that Lai Mohammed in a series of press conferences had denied any killings of peaceful protesters by Nigerian soldiers on the stipulated date and had threatened to sue Cable News Network and other international bodies that claimed otherwise.
But on Monday the Judicial Panel set up by the Lagos State Government to probe the alleged case submitted its reports to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu which indicated that indeed there was a massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate.
The 309-page report 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.”
Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel recommended that all army officers deployed in the Lekki tollgate should be made to face appropriate disciplinary action, stripped of their ranks and dismissed as they were not fit and proper to serve in any public or security service of the nation.
The report had, however, made the information minister be in the eye of the storm since Monday, November 15, 2021, after the panel submitted its report to the Lagos State Government.
Daily independent observed that the office of the minister has kept mum three days after the panel’s report on the Lekki incident of October 20, 2020, leaked to the public.
Following the leaked report, a Nigerian counsel for CNN, Olumide Babalola, on Monday asked Mohammed to tender an apology to the medium for tagging as fake an investigative report by the American media house but the minister hasn’t responded, personally or by proxy, days after.
A civic advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, subsequently called for the minister’s “dismissal, arrest and trial for his egregious falsehood which has now been contradicted by a judicial panel of investigators in Lagos.”
Also, the minority caucus in the House of Representatives on Thursday called for the immediate resignation of Mohammed, or his sacking by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), over his claims on the Lekki incident.
Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), on Thursday, said all those who tried to cover up the shootings at the Lekki toll gate on October 20, 2020, must be sanctioned for complicity.
Specifically, Falana said the Mohammed; the Attorney General of Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN); as well as the managers of the toll gate, the Lekki Concession Company; must be sanctioned for trying to cover up the “crimes against humanity committed at the toll gate” during the EndSARS protests last year.
The United States, the United Nations, the United Kingdom and Amnesty International have also called on the Nigerian authorities to ensure that the panel’s report is handled transparently.
