Lekki Tollgate Protest
There was anger on Saturday following the arrest of 40 persons who protested peacefully against the reopening of the Lekki Tollgate Plaza in Lagos State. The peaceful protesters were arrested on Saturday and locked up in standby Black Maria. Police later brought them before a mobile court in Yaba for conspiracy, conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace and violation of COVID-19 protocols. Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry probing police brutality and alleged killings of #EndSARS protesters by soldiers at the Lekki Tollgate, had ruled that the tollgate be handed back to its operator, Lekki Concession Company,(LCC) after forensic experts submitted their report on the October 20, 2020 incident.
Four out of the nine members of the panel had faulted the report of the forensic experts hired to comb the scene for evidence and rejected the application by the LCC to take possession of the facility, which had been shut down since the probe of the shootings started. The four members who rejected the forensic report are the two representatives of the civil society, as well as the two youth representatives on the panel. They contented that the LCC denied the forensic experts access to its servers and failed to provide them with information on who ordered the extraction of CCTV footage, the date and time of extraction of the footage, the method used for the extraction.
Lagos State and the Federal Government as well as the police had warned the protesters to shelve the protest but some of them defied the warning and came out on Saturday to protest against the reopening. The protesters at different times in the day came to the tollgate in units and small groups, expressing their displeasure at what they described as injustice on the part of the government. A popular comedian, Debo Adedayo well known as Mr Macaroni and others were hounded by armed policemen, into a waiting Black Maria, and whisked away. Later in the day, 40 protesters were arraigned for allegedly conducting themselves in a manner capable of causing a breach of the peace. The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, confirmed that they were granted bail.
