Lekki shooting: Army ‘acted within rules of engagement’

The Coalition for Truth and Justice (CTJ) says the Nigerian Army did not breach its rules of engagement at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos during the #EndSARS protests.

According to the coalition, the troops acted in a professional manner and have been agents of stabilisation, instrumental to restoration of peace.

In a statement signed by Timothy Charles, its national coordinator, the coalition  said it carried out a preliminary investigation to ascertain the actual state of things.

It said from the footages reviewed, the sole confirmed fatality from the Lekki toll gate incident was as a result of blunt force trauma and not gunshot.

With these and other “overwhelming proof”, the CTJ concluded that there was no massacre as being portrayed.

It, however, urged relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate key people among the protesters.

“The Coalition for Truth and Justice (CTJ), after a careful review of available information, has reached the conclusion that the Nigerian Army did not breach its rules of engagement during the incident at Lekki Toll Plaza and indeed any other part of Lagos state and the entire country in the course of the #EndSARS protests,” the statement read.

“Contrary to the ongoing vilification campaign, emerging facts rather suggest that the Nigerian Army has been an agent of stabilization that was instrumental to restoration of peace in many of the cities across the country with the curtailing of the violence that had threatened to spiral out of control.

“CTJ, in response to the statement issued by the Nigerian Army Tuesday night,  has carried out its preliminary investigations and far from what everyone had said, we studied the situation and came up with a clear understanding that the Nigerian Army did not breach its Rules of Engagement in all the instances.

“While soldiers were being accused of shooting into the crowd of protesters at Lekki Toll Plaza, it is interesting to note that every single video clip shared by the #EndSARS protesters depicted the soldiers as firing into the air. The loud sound of the gunshots in the videos indicated that what the soldiers were firing were blank rounds while the silver shell casings retrieved from the scene by the protesters further confirmed that the rounds were blank.

“Furthermore, shooting 15 people dead as claimed would have flooded the scene with anything upwards of 75 liters of human blood, which would have been visible for all to see on the morning of the following day. There was no such and there were no remains, except for the tenuous lie that the corpses were handed over to soldiers, something that turned out to be false since no mortuary has reported receiving the remains and the foreign partners of the protesters have not been able to come up with satellite images of freshly dug mass graves as they are used to alleging.

“What we were able to establish is that the one confirmed fatality from the Lekki Toll Gate incident was from blunt force trauma and not gunshot. It is therefore trite for CTJ to point out that almost every single person that the cyber wing of the protest had trended as being killed at the toll gate have returned from the dead to refute news of their demise just as pictures from movie shoots that they attempted to use to discredit the Army have been exposed.

“It is pertinent to point out that the other jurisdictions that the protesters are comparing Nigeria to would not stand by idle while arsonists and anarchists make life unbearable for other people while also destroying national assets and looting everywhere. In the United States, there have been instances when the national guard was called in to assist the civil police in curbing extreme protests. In the United Kingdom, during the 2011 London Riots, 92% of persons surveyed were opened to the Army being brought in to curtail the destruction by protesters. “