On Saturday, Sarah Ibrahim, a freelance auditor and one of the coordinators of the #EndSars protest, presented videos to the Lagos Judicial Panel on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other Matters, to demonstrate that soldiers fired shots and killed protesters at Lekki Toll Gate on October 10, 2020.
In an abridged version of Sarah’s testimony published by Channels TV, soldiers can be seen firing shots in front of a crowd of young people at the Lekki Toll Gate. A large room, said to be Reddington Hospital, was shown housing persons with varying degrees of injuries. According to Sarah, the hospital was so filled with injured #EndSars protesters that some were attended to at the car park.
Sarah, who said she filmed most of the videos with an iPhone, revealed that soldiers shot at unarmed protesters and took away the bodies of some of the victims.
“So the soldiers ended up carrying him in the truck. They put him in the truck along with some dead bodies,” she said of Lekan Sanusi, a protester soldiers allegedly mistook for a dead person as a result of the blood stains around him.
“They took him to MRS Bonny Camp. The same place they said was not functioning was where he was carried to. And in his truck, it was only two people that were alive. The remaining 11 people were dead, and he counted them. It was the nurse who noticed he was alive that helped him and smuggled him out. He had to run away. They carried him to another hospital.”
Asked if she could authenticate the videos, Sarah told the panel that Google Drive could be used to extract the date, time and location of the videos.
Two mothers who said they lost their sons at the protest ground also spoke to the panel in pre-recorded videos interpreted at the session.
Sarah added that authorities at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) foiled attempts to track injured colleagues citing the need not to embarrass government.
“When we went to the hospital, because of the commotion that ensued from us seeking to know the number of #EndSars protesters at LASUTH, an internal memo was later passed and given to each Head of Department. One of the staff took it and sent to me. And it reads: ‘In other not to embarrass management and government, staff are advised to be cautious in their utterances, especially with unknown visitors.’”
Sarah’s testimonies corroborate a series of FIJ investigations which revealed that well over 20 people died from shots fired by Nigerian soldiers at Lekki Toll Gate.
Veio credit: Channels TV
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