Lekki shooting: ‘We counted 15 corpses’ — DJ Switch insists protesters were killed

Obianuju Udeh, a Nigerian disc jockey better known as DJ Switch, is insisting that people were killed when men in army uniform opened fire on #EndSARS protesters on Tuesday.

There has been a controversy over the deaths as most of the persons said to have been killed have debunked the reports.

There is yet to be an identified victim who reportedly died in the attack.

In a video shared on her Instagram page on Friday, the DJ said at least 15 persons were shot dead on the night while several others sustained injuries of varying degrees.

She said operatives of the Nigerian army and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) — including the now-disbanded special anti-robbery squad (SARS) — shot at protesters.

“We were teargassed. We would run and come back and the only thing we fought with was our flags. We would sit on the floor and raise our hands up, waiving the flags and singing the national anthem. That’s all we had,” she said.

“They put off the light. Even if there is no power in that axis, on a good day, there is always light at the Lekki toll gate. But on that day, there was no light, the street lights were off, it was pitch black.

“A boy jumped on me, shouting ‘cover her’, cover her’. I didn’t even understand why he did that. They shot that boy at my back. I fell while we were trying to pick up bullet shells. One landed close my ear while we picked one from someone’s laps.

“The military were there killing Nigerian citizens. The police and SARS came and were doing the same thing, aiming and shooting. They were pointing the gun at us and shooting live bullets. Who takes live bullets to protest ground? Who does that?”

The entertainer called on Nigerian leaders not to “insult the pains and intelligence of families affected by trying to downplay what happened” during the incident.

DJ Switch also claimed that soldiers threw the dead bodies of some of the protesters killed during the incident inside their vans.

“To our leaders, do not insult the grief and intelligence of Nigerians. Do not insult the pains that affected families are facing. People were falling left and right. People did die, it wasn’t photoshopped,” she said.

“Something I think about now, with hindsight, which I wished we hadn’t done was carrying dead bodies and dropped at the feet of soldiers so that they could see what they did to us,” she added.

“When I asked their unit commander or something ‘why are you killing us’? I wish we didn’t do that because they ended up throwing the dead bodies inside their vans. This continued until the next morning.”

She, however, dismissed claims that she earlier said 78 people died during the incident, urging people to desist from peddling misinformation.

“I never said 78 people died. What I do know is that as of when I was doing my live video, seven people had died. When my phone went off, we had counted about 15 people,” she said.

“I don’t know if it was more than that. We had a lot that had stray bullet wounds and all that. It’s also not true that my cousin died.”

Switch said she decided to speak up as a result of speculations, adding that she was threatened for live-streaming the incident.

“My life was threatened for speaking up. People risked their lives to take me away from a place I call my home,” she said.