Adeshina Ogunlana, lead counsel for EndSARS petitioners, has criticised the Lagos state government’s position in the leaked letter allowing the mass burial of 103 EndSARS victims.
On Sunday, a leaked email written to the Lagos State Ministry of Health revealed that the Lagos State Government approved N61,285,000 for the mass burial of 103 people listed as 2020 EndSARS victims, sparking uproar on social media.
The Lagos State Government, on the other hand, responded to the leaked document by claiming that the victims to be buried were not from the infamous Lekki Tollgate incident.
On Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Monday, Ogunlana stated the Lagos State Government is just half as bright as it appears.
“The government is only half-witting, and they are not telling the whole truth.” Yes, I concur with the position that the 103 bodies were not all collected up from the Lekki toll gate and its surroundings.
“To use a term used by the pathologist on the panel, professor Obafunwa, he said bodies were scavenged and corpses were picked from various locations.” But there were dead around the Lekki Toll Gate area as well; some of them were dumped at the General Hospital, Lagos Island, and so on.
He further chastised the government for claiming that there were no named individuals from the Lekki Toll Gate, claiming that the 103 people scheduled to be buried by the government also lacked names.
“For the government to now say, oh no, there is no named citizen, my question is this: do the 103 corpses that they want to dispose of have any names?” There was no identification.
“The bodies that were taken around the environment of the Lekki toll gate when Baba Fafunwa was speaking, he at least identified three that were perforated with missiles,” he claimed.
However, the legal practitioner clarified that the idea from some quarters that all 103 bodies came from the Lekki Toll Gate was likewise incorrect.
“People claiming that the 103 is proof that 103 people were killed at the Lekki toll gate are making a grave error, and I will not join them.”
“However, to claim that no body was recovered in the vicinity of the Lekki toll gate incident in 2020 is completely false,” he stated.
According to Ogunlana, the government was aiming to “profit from the cruel loss of lives” by sanctioning up to N60 million for the mass burial.
“Even now, the system of government that we have in Lagos State, and by extension, Nigeria, demonstrates that they want to profit from the cruel loss of life.”
“How can you say you approved N61 million to bury 103 degraded bodies in a mass grave?” Unidentified folks, people that no one came forward to claim and all that, I mean, that’s horrifying,” Ogunlana lamented.
The governor established an inquest led by Justice Doris Okuwobi because there was debate about the number of deaths registered during the EndSARS demonstration.
Since the protests began in 2020, both the Lagos and Federal governments have denied any mass killings during the EndSARS protests.
The message comes more than two years after widespread protests across the country. The Lagos State Government has yet to respond to the leaked document.
Thousands of Nigerians came to the streets around the country to protest police violence and demand far-reaching reforms, particularly with relation to the police’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
The weeks-long protests, which attracted international attention, culminated in the controversial killing of protestors at the popular Lekki Tollgate in Lagos, which served as a rallying point for those who took part in the rallies.
