Ganiyu Musa, the Chairman of the Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA), has said insurance companies paid N4 billion as claims to owners of businesses destroyed during last year’s nationwide #EndSARS protest.

Musa said over 2,000 insured businesses were affected during the protest, according to a Premium Times report.

While assuring customers that all genuine claims resulting from the protests would be paid, he said insurance operators were still collating claims. He maintained that every genuine claim would be settled.

“The number of insured businesses that were affected at the last count was about 2,000 and the industry has settled N4 billion claims out of N4.5 billion in respect of the #EndSARS protests,” he said.

He also said that the association had commenced discussions with the Lagos State Building Control Agency as part of engagements on the implementation of Lagos State Building law in line with the compulsory insurance initiative.

READ ALSO: My Safety No Longer Guaranteed, Says #EndSars Protester Who Cried Out Against DSS

“We are also working closely with the state Vehicle Inspection Service on enforcement of Third Party Motor Insurance in the state,” he said.

“We are engaging Kaduna, Kogi and Ogun states, and remain hopeful that other states will see value in the platform and embrace it. Out of the estimated 13 million vehicles in Nigeria only about 2,939,767 Third Party Motor policies are in force as of April 26, 2021.”

Recently, Nigerians trooped to the streets to demand an end to SARS, a unit of the Police notorious for extrajudicial executions. The protest, tagged #EndSARS, lingered for weeks, continuing even after the Inspector General of Police (IGP) announced the scrapping of the unit and its replacement with Special Weapon and Tactics (SWAT) unit.

The angry protesters refused to leave the streets, insisting their demands were beyond replacing SARS with SWAT. The protests attracted the attention of the international community, and continued with youth blocking  major roads across the country until it was said to have been hijacked by hoodlums, thus banned. Policemen and soldiers injured and killed civilians, especially in Lagos, where a yet unknown number of peaceful protesters were massacred.

Despite the presence of security agents and imposition of curfew in many states of the country, crimes perpetrated by hoodlum under the guise of the #EndSARS protests were unchecked. This left thousands of businesses and properties destroyed and looted.