Moyosore Onigbanjo, attorney-general and commissioner for
justice in Lagos, says many “contradictions” in the report of the state’s
judicial panel on police brutality make the findings unreliable.
The Lagos government, On Tuesday, released the white paper
on the report submitted by the judicial panel set up to probe cases of police
brutality in the state.
The panel had submitted two reports — one on cases of police
brutality and another on the Lekki shooting incident – on November 15.
The panel had listed nine fatalities from the shooting at the Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020, however the white paper, citing what it described as “fundamental inconsistencies,” rejected the figure, adding that that the findings are not supported by evidence.
Buttressing this stance in a chat with Arise TV on
Wednesday, Onigbanjo, head of the four-person white paper committee, said the
panel’s findings on the shooting at the Lekki tollgate were contrary to the
evidence provided.
He added that the panel’s report “created doubts and gaps”
and “did not explain how they arrived at that conclusion, the names, who shot
them and when they were shot”.
“The panel said they found the report of Professor Obafunwa
who deducted autopsy on all the bodies picked up around Lagos during the
protest, not just in Lekki; that they found his evidence credible and that
there was no evidence to the contrary. Professor Obafunwa said that of all the
bodies he conducted autopsies on, three came from Lekki and out of those, only
one had gunshot injury. And the panel then said, ‘we believe you and accept
your evidence because there is nothing to the contrary.’ It means what
Professor Obafunwa said outweighs every other piece of evidence before the
panel.
“Then the panel then
goes on to say there were nine dead. If you look at that page where the deads
from the Lekki tollgate were listed, they did not explain how they arrived at
that conclusion, the names, who shot them and when they were shot. So that’s a
contradiction because what Professor Obafunwa said is different from the
conclusion they are now reaching. And there were so many others.
“They also said one Nathanial Solomon died at Lekki
tollgate. It also turns out that Nathaniel Solomon was a witness before them
and handed a petition in respect of his late brother.
“Those contradictions and many more made that particular
finding unreliable. Because for a finding that somebody died at a scene to be
acceptable, there must be no doubt. What the panel did create doubts; it
created gaps in their story of nine deaths. And once there are doubts, the
doubts are usually resolved in favour of the person you’re accusing to have
murdered or killed those people — because of this, that particular finding was
rejected.”
Onigbanjo then said the two reports from the panels will be
release to the public soon to allow the people to make their own judgment from
the findings.
“We are also going to
release the two reports of the panel to the public to judge by themselves. So
we are not just going to be a case of Lagos state government analysing this in
itself and coming to its conclusions. We are going to make them available to everybody
to read it,” he said.
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