18th November, 2021
Human rights activist, Femi Falana has called on the Federal Government to sanction the Attorney General, Abubakar Malami, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed and others who tried to cover up the Lekki Tollgate shooting.
The judicial panel set up by the Lagos State Government on SARS brutality released a damning report on Monday indicting the Nigerian Army and the police of killing 11 unarmed protesters and injuring many others.
The report has been causing lots of ripples in the country and beyond.
But Falana, in an interview on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily, said Mohammed had said on several occasion that nobody was killed at the Lekki Tollgate.
He added that Malami had also said those who appeared in Lekki were not Nigerian soldiers but people who just put on military uniforms to perpetrate atrocities.
Falana stated that even the military denied the shooting, but that when the young people who are advanced in technology and who took photographs in the night when the soldiers were shooting, that was then the military said they only shot into the air.
The activist added that the panel painstakingly analysed the evidence of every witness before arriving at the conclusion, saying that it was difficult to cover up what happened on that day.
He said all those who attempted to cover up the killings, including Mohammed and Malami should be sanctioned.
“Anybody who attempted to cover up would be sanctioned, any of them including those who managed Lekki, the LCC, because they disabled their system in order to cover up,” he said.
According to Falana, any regime in the world that said these are federal officers and would not sanction them, would face the wrath of the International Criminal Court.
The legal luminary explained that under the Rome Statute, the ICC would only intervene if a government was unwilling or unable to prosecute those who engaged in crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression.