A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa said a leaked Lagos State Government memo on secret mass burial of 103 victims of the October 2020 EndSARS protest is one of the many surprises to come.
Adegboruwa stated this while speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Law Weekly on Saturday.
Recall that Adegboruwa was a member of the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other matters.
According to him, nobody in Nigeria would say they are not aware that there were fatalities on the night of October 20, 2020.
He said, “The leaked memo from the Ministry of Health of Lagos State is one of the many surprises that people will still see in the course of time so long as the government has not come to terms with the reality of the events of October 20th, 2020.”
On the night of October 20, 2020, soldiers stormed the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, where youths converged on to protest police brutality and extrajudicial killings.
But Adegboruwa said, “May be the challenge would be the quantum or the number of such fatalities.
“But to blanketly assert that there was no death or there was no blood spilt in any way at all as a result in particular of gunshots by members of the Nigerian Army is to do a disservice to the souls of those people who are affected.
The controversial incident attracted global outrage and rebuke by human rights groups including Amnesty International.
A leaked memo addressed to the Lagos State Ministry of Health indicating that the state government approved N61,285,000 for the mass burial of 103 persons identified as 2020 EndSARS victims sparked outrage.
The memo dated July 19, 2023, captured steps for the processing of funds after approval by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
The Lagos State Ministry of Health subsequently confirmed the letter in a statement last Sunday.
But, the it insisted that the bodies were not from the Lekki toll gate but were picked by the Lagos State Environmental Health Unit (SEHMU) from areas such as Fagba, Ketu, Ikorodu, Orile, Ajegunle, Abule-Egba, Ikeja, Ojota, Ekoro, Ogba, Isolo and Ajah.
Credit: Vanguard News Nigeria