For almost two weeks from 8th to 21st October, 2020, various parts of the country were gripped by fervent protests, mostly organized and actualized by aggrieved youths, tagged #ENDSARS, which expressed the widespread fury, disillusionment and exasperation of large numbers of Nigerians at the atrocities and human rights violations routinely perpetrated by the now defunct unit of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) known as the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS). Perhaps because of the role and status of Lagos State as the country’s commercial nerve centre and industrial hub; it being a melting pot of the diverse ethno-regional components of Nigeria where people of virtually every ethnic group reside, and the understandable concentration of the highest number of youth population in the state, Lagos was the epicentre of the anti-SARS demonstrations.
What started as peaceful protests against brazen and rampant violations of the human rights and dignity of Nigerian citizens by the FSARS soon degenerated into mindless violence resulting in bitter harvests of blood, sorrow and tears no less gruesome than the pains and torture inflicted on mostly innocent people by a police outfit maintained by public funds and established to protect, not and tyrannize members of the Public. Unfortunately, Lagos was the worst victim of this degeneration of the protests and its hijack by hoodlums and criminals who were not actuated by the high-minded ideals of the original organisers of the protests. Thus, the level of destruction of private and public property, business and infrastructure in the state resulted in losses estimated at no less than N2 trillion. Yet, the NPF is an outfit of the federal government and not Lagos State.
The disbandment of the FSARS by the then Inspector General of Police on the 11th of October 2020, and the federal government’s acceding to the 5-point demand of the protesters did not, unfortunately, stem the tide of the protests. Rather, the intensity of the demonstrations heightened as the protesters widened the scope of their demands and thus, inadvertently, allowing those with an utterly different agenda to perpetrate arson on public property and private businesses, commit arrant criminality, and launch destructive assaults on security personnel as well as their work stations and residential barracks and inflicting grievous injuries on many while snuffing out several lives. The police were the most affected by this onslaught, and again Lagos was the site of the worst devastations and depredations in this regard.
Following the directive of the National Economic Council (NEC) to the various state governments on 14th October, 2020, to establish panels of inquiry to look into petitions of reported cases of brutality, abuse of human rights and the rule of law by the FSARS, the Lagos State government set up the Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by the FSARS in the state, determine degree of culpability of affected police officers with a view to recommending requisite punishment for those found guilty as well as paying compensation to victims of police brutality and oppression.
As governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu noted while swearing in members of the tribunal, “In Lagos, beyond setting up this Panel which we hope will serve as a representation of our broader interests, we have established a N200 million fund for compensation to families and individuals who have been victimised by officers of the disbanded SARS”. The 9-member Panel was headed by a retired jurist, Justice Doris Okuwobi, and had representatives of civil society, the ENDSARS protesters, the police and the National Human Rights Commission as members. Although initially billed to sit for six months from 27 October 2020, the Panel sat until 18th October 2021, given the volume of petitions and complaints brought before it.
In a new landmark publication, a well-known civil rights and pro-democracy activist, public affairs commentator and analyst on the print, electronic and social media and seasoned election observer and monitor, Mr Nelson Ekujimi, has documented in exhaustive detail an eyewitness account of the deliberations of the Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution, which lasted for one year. The compendium spanning 1139 pages features reports on not less than 128 petitions and complaints brought before the Panel and the decisions reached by the Panel in several cases.
Mr Ekujimi acknowledges the support of various journalists that covered the deliberations of the Panel for the one year duration including reporters and correspondents from Television Continental (TVC), Channels Television and Lagos Television, as well as the legal team of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and the legal team of the Nigeria Police Force “who came to our rescue when some EndSars movement members harassed and assaulted the team leader for the offence of covering and reporting the Panel ‘s work as witnessed instead of embellishing it; in line with vested interest narratives.”
Suffice it to say that this document of invaluable historical record was possible because of the fidelity of the governor Sanwo-Olu administration to its promise to ensure that the Panel did a meticulous job in probing the alleged injustices suffered by citizens at the hands of the FSARS and recommending the requisite compensation. To achieve this objective, the Panel was given a free hand to operate by the state government, which also made the necessary resources available to ensure the success of the Panel’s deliberations. Earlier, the governor had been widely commended for the composition of the Panel, which included well known civil society activists who had been known to be highly critical of government at all levels over the years, representatives of the aggrieved ENDSARS protesters, the police, the NBA and of course, the Chairman, a respected retired jurist not known for any partisan political proclivities.
The petitions and cases pleaded before the Panel, which are copiously documented in this book, vividly portray the depth of dehumanization of mostly innocent citizens by the FSARS. Many of the stories of injustices suffered by the various victims are harrowing and heart-rending. As Nelson Ekujimi states in the preface to the book, “The Lagos State Judicial Panel on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuse and other matters sitting afforded the Nigerian people the opportunity to hear directly from the victims of security agencies’ abuses and brutality in an atmosphere devoid of the regular court procedures and tension. The Panel allowed indigent victims to air their petition with the assistance of pro bono services from the Nigerian Bar Association, in a record time that the workload of the regular courts will not allow for the quick dispensation of justice, as witnessed. Through the Panel sitting, one heard of the painful and bitter experiences of what some victims encountered in the hands of the disbanded notorious Nigeria Police unit, SARS, which could best be described as “man’s inhumanity to man”.
But then, there were also unsavoury sides to the proceedings, which were clearly unveiled in the verbatim reports of the proceedings as recorded in this book. Thus, the impression was created, for instance, that some members of the Panel, lawyers, civil society activists, and sections of the media were determined to reinforce and impose on the public consciousness the allegation that a massacre actually occurred at the Lekki Toll Gate where soldiers detailed to enforce the curfew imposed by the state government at the height of the degeneration of the protests to sheer anarchy allegedly fired live bullets into a crowd of protesting youths.
According to Ekujimi, “We also heard of some testimonies that on the scale of probability, could best be described as fiction or a film making session, most especially the petitions of the “Lekki Toll Gate incident, where alleged victims and even a volunteer, narrated how the Nigerian Army personnel were firing live ammunition indiscriminately at protesters and they were dodging bullets by running in a zigzag manner, dodging and escaping being shot at, while at the same time during the indiscriminate shooting period, were helping those who were shot to be ferried to the hospital for treatment. These bizarre stories are more fiction-like than reality; they can best be described as magical.”
The author notes that the thoroughness and diligence with which the Panel discharged its duties during its sittings were not reflected in its conclusions and recommendations, especially on the Lekki Toll Gate incident of 20th October, 2020. In the words of Ekujimi, the Panel “stated that there was a “Massacre in context” and even went ahead to name victims of the massacre whose deaths were never proven through police report, medical report, case notes, autopsy report and death certificate throughout the Panel’s sittings. Not one of the alleged victims’ testimony was substantiated with the critical elements of fact and evidence but shockingly, the Panel went out of its way to even affirm that a petitioner who petitioned the Panel over the death of his brother and testified before the Panel in September 2021, was listed as one of the alleged “victims of the massacre of 20th October, 2020”.
Among anomalies cited by Ekujimi included “medical experts who issued medical reports not based on case notes of victims treated, but based on a victim’s inconsistent oral statements on the cause of injury and when confronted with the contradictions in the medical report and case note, distance themselves from the report or, in some cases, were exposed as liars under oath. We also had a medical practitioner who wrote a medical report on an incident of October 2020 in June 2021, based on a phone conversation between a nurse in the hospital and the brother of the victim, after receiving the Panel summons in 2021. The Panel sittings witnessed all manner of absurdities that questioned the sincerity and integrity of some of the stakeholders.”
The good thing about this book is that it factually reports the proceedings at the Panel’s sittings without any opinionated commentaries, thus affording readers the opportunity of ascertaining the veracity or otherwise of the author’s prefatory remarks by reading the reports of the various cases before the Panel. Also listed in an appendix to the book are the names of 69 persons whose petitions were successful and who were awarded various sums in compensation ranging between N750,000 and N10 million. Significantly, the victims received their monetary awards immediately, even before the Panel formally wound up its sittings. This is no doubt a publication of tremendous importance on a momentous event in the annals of the country’s history that will facilitate productive reflections on the root causes of the protests, the benefits gained and the avoidable errors on all sides that should be useful in guiding future actions in similar circumstances.
by Segun Ayobolu @TheNation
