The Lagos State Government has released its white paper rejecting the report of the Judicial Panel of Inquiry.
The panel had declared that there was indeed a massacre in Lekki Toll Gate during the 2020 #EndSARS protest.
According to the government, the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led Lagos State ‘Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution of Victims of SARS-Related Abuses and Other Related Matters’ failed to verify arbitrary and indiscriminate killing of protesters at the toll gate.
From the 36-page White Paper released yesterday, the government stated that the panel’s findings “are clearly and manifestly not supported by the evidence before the JPI as attested to by the JPI itself, when it said there was no contrary evidence to that of Prof. Obafunwa that only one person died at Lekki Toll Gate of gunshot wounds on 21st October 2020”.
Rejecting the recommendation, it said: “The state government is, therefore, unable to accept the finding that nine (9) people died of gunshot wounds at LTG on 20th October 2020.”
The white paper further said, “It also follows that the irresistible conclusion to be drawn from the JPI’s acceptance of Prof. Obafunwa’s testimony that only one (1) person died of gunshot wounds at LTG on 21st October 2020 is that there was no massacre at LTG, contextual or otherwise.
“The findings of JPI that nine (9) people died at the LTG on 20th October 2020 from gunshots fired by the military are based on assumptions and speculations.
“The inconsistencies and contradictions in the entire JPI Report concerning the number of persons who died at LTG on 20th October 2020 and their cause of death rendered the JPI’s findings and conclusions there upon totally unreliable and therefore, unacceptable.”
Although the JPI made 32 recommendations in its report of 15th November 2021, the government accepted eleven, rejected one and accepted six with modifications.
