#EndSARS report: What happens now to Lai Mohammed & co?

On Monday, November 15, 2021, the judicial panel on police brutality set up by the Lagos state government submitted its report a year after it was set up. The panel submitted two sets of reports: one report on police brutality cases and the other report specifically on the events of October 20, 2020; at the Lekki tollgate otherwise tagged #LekkiMassacre. Receiving the report from the chairperson of the panel Doris Okuwobi, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu made all the right noises. He also set up a four-member committee headed by Moyosore Onigbanjo, the Lagos state attorney-general, to produce a white paper “on the panel’s recommendations within the next two weeks“.

If you are confused as to why the government needs another committee to deliberate and produce a white paper in two weeks on what took a nine-person panel a year to deliver, you are not alone. Apparently, this is all due process and we are not supposed to be worried that committees are the places ideas and projects go to die in Nigeria. You know the joke about if the Biblical Israelites had waited on Moses to form committees, they would still be in Egypt? Already, government bots are in full swing digging loopholes in a report that hasn’t yet been formally presented to the federal government or made public. Why should we believe the government anyway? Hopefully, it doesn’t all become bants on social media because nothing is too ridiculous for some Nigerians to advance just to win points or earn allowances from their paymasters. But I digress.

Anyhow, the report has since been leaked. If you are interested, you can download it here. Even before I downloaded the report, I’d watched on Maiyegun Diary Politico where he gave a detailed summary of the panel’s findings. It was painful to sit and listen/watch. Some of the key issues addressed which the panel provided answers to whether the Nigerian Army was invited to the Lekki Tollgate on the night of October 20, 2020; and the panel’s answer is an unequivocal ‘yes.’ Did the army carry blank and live ammunition? The answer is also ‘yes.’ This wouldn’t be news for anyone who half-followed the live reporting from the panel’s sittings. And no, it isn’t true that Nigerian Army soldiers only shot in the air, as the panel shows that soldiers shot in the air and also directly at the unarmed unresisting protesters-Nigerians. Long story short, the panel submits that there indeed was a #LekkiMassacre and there’s a list of names of some of the dead and injured. Not to forget, the panel also took time to thank those hospitals that treated the injured sometimes performing emergency life-saving surgeries to save some lives. There still are unclaimed unidentified corpses believed to be victims of the Lekki Tollgate massacre of young protesters by the Nigerian security forces.

So, my question is: now what? I ask this because, in the immediate aftermath of the Lekki Tollgate Massacre, there were many vociferous deniers, from journalists, political jobbers, to celebrities (or ‘yeyebrities’ as some people call them). The likes of Kemi Olunloyo, Iyabo Awokoya and co. I place all #EndSARS deniers into categories such as inhuman, ignorant, insane (I don’t use this as an insult), wickedness in high places, and as many categories as I can come up with. I couldn’t (and can’t still) understand how these people were so ready to discount fellow human beings, people’s children. Ex-Channels TV anchorperson, Sulaiman Aledeh comes to mind. He was quite vocal on Twitter as he appeared to be on a one-man crusade to fight “fake news”. He actually wanted people to produce the dead bodies and seemed to think he was Sanwo-Olu’s defender-in-chief. Meanwhile, on his Twitter profile, he cites his interests as “Development, Charity, People, Politics, and Life (emphasis mine)”. Should the fact that a few people were spreading rumours be enough to lose sight of those that were killed or injured?

Nollywood actress, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, also contributed her two kobo and was dragged by Nigerians. She had done a long thread that was actually in support of ending police impunity (she would later join the protest herself). However, whatever good she meant in the rest of the thread was damaged by her very first tweet which she began: “If people died during the Lekki Toll assault, let their people speak out please and if there were no deaths, then enough with the sensationalisation because it does not remove from the crime that happened…” If people died? How could their people have spoken up when according to the panel, families whose loved ones were victims were afraid for their lives because they were being hunted by the government’s security forces? ‘Lekki Toll Assault’ is a new one. I don’t know what she means by ‘sensationalisation’ for someone whose job depends on the suspension of disbelief. Yet, she doesn’t mind us believing she’s the Angelina Jolie of Africa? I think there was a basic inability by Omotola to read the room. Hopefully, she’s not as bad as Desmond Elliot.

Let’s leave celebrities for a moment. There were government representatives who were falling over themselves, over who could stridently deny the Lekki Massacre the hardest. The winner of the prize for this ‘category’ is none other than the minister of information Lai Mohammed. Neither Minister Lai’s fatherly role as a father himself nor the fact that for what it’s worth, he’s paid by Nigerian taxpayers made him lose sight of where his true allegiance lies. Any opportunity he had (you bet he made sure to create opportunities when they weren’t readily available), he castigated DJ Switch (Obianuju Udeh) whose live broadcast from her Instagram account was how many watched in real-time as young Nigerians were being shot at holding the Nigerian flag-as they sang the national anthem. Minister Lai wanted us to believe that IG live was doctored. He also had choice words for CNN whose #EndSARS documentary drew his ire. Here’s a report on the five times (at least) that Lai Mohammed said no one was killed at the Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020. There’s a video of him on Maiyegun’s Diary confidently demanding that people produce the corpses of those that were killed. This was the confidence of someone who knew that the cleanup had already been done. The panel proved that the Lagos Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) cleaned up the tollgate the next morning. LAWMA itself tweeted that fact. Yet, Minister Lai wanted us to produce the dead bodies.

Curiously, it was this same cleaned up Lekki Tollgate that Babatunde Fashola, the minister of works and housing, visited several days later and discovered a hidden camera. It would’ve been hilarious was it not a life and death matter. By the way, Minister Fashola (or Inspector Fashola as Nigerians nicknamed him) is a close runner up to Lai Mohammed only because as a former governor of Lagos state, one would’ve expected him to show more concern. Nigerians had a field day ‘dragging’ Fashola who has been underwhelming as a minister, first as minister of power (where he earned the alias ‘minister of darkness’, MOD). Comedian AY created a Detective Fashola skit on Youtube with the hashtag #DetectiveFashchallenge. Others also joined in.

Jokes aside, the right lessons must be learnt from the Lekki Tollgate massacre. There must be a difference in how the government responds to the recommendations of this panel. The other day on the Arise TV ‘Morning Show’, a day after the report was submitted, panellists, Oseni Rufai and Reuben Abati, traced the history of panels and white papers as far back as 1929 (Aba Women’s Protest-I don’t want to use the word riots) and the Iva Valley massacre in Enugu in 1949. Nothing of significance it seems came from the inquiry set up by the colonisers. And on and on we have been having committees, panels, and reports with not much change.

In the case of #EndSARS, other states are not in a hurry to find solutions to the police impunity in their states. Like Anambra state with the notorious Awkuzu SARS and even more notorious James Nwafor. Still, we must pay attention to Lagos state. It’s the self-acclaimed centre of excellence after all. Public officers like Lai Mohammed, Tunde Fashola, their understudies like Femi Adesina and co must be made to realise that acting against the people of Nigeria has serious consequences.