Published 21st Oct, 2022

By Segun Ige

If there was ever a country where journalists’ rights are never protected, I think and believe Nigeria is one. As a matter of fact, the provisions made for the press in the 1999 Constitution are ‘old commandments’ that have been replaced by a new set of unscripted rules and regulations.

Prominent among these newly fabricated rules is the one that clearly shows that, as a journalist, your freedom, in terms of covering a protest that is of national concern and interest, is limited.

My first encounter while covering the well-intentioned gathering at the Lekki Toll Plaza to commemorate the second year anniversary of the monumental #EndSARS protests of October 2020 was with a female photojournalist.

She was coughing strongly and severely shedding tears. Yes, we had just escaped two gun shots and tear gas fumes from the police.

“Oh, sorry,” I said to her after we found a shed that we thought could protect us from police brutality.

Like all other journalists who were on ground, I could tell that she was also passionate about covering the protest. From my position, I could see she had taken a lot of pictures at the gathering.

“Are you a journalist as well?” she asked.

“I think some of my colleagues have been taken by the police; I need to go and see them.”

What the journalist, whose name I never got to know, perceived as a colleague’s arrest from afar was actually the harasmment of Oba Adeoye, an Arise TV journalist, by some soldiers.

While Adeoye was being harassed, Eniola Daniel, a reporter with TheGuardian, was being brutalised by the same soldiers. Daniel was beaten up to a point that he suffered a deep cut on his right leg.

Daniel had arrived at the Plaza very early in the morning of October 20 to cover the event. Dutifully and responsibly, he had met with the leader of the police squad and had identified himself as a journalist.

Daniel had thought that by doing that, the police would be “his friend”. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

https://twitter.com/UnlimitedEniola/status/1583369071596535808

“I thought there was not going to be any problem since I already identified myself as a journalist but then five overzealous officers dragged me and started kicking me and I fell,” Daniel had said.

“I was assaulted badly. While I was coughing, another policeman was kicking me.”

One of the policemen, who had indiscriminately fired the tear gas in the air to disperse the crowd, tagged Daniel and all other protesters as criminals.

The harassment suffered by journalists at the gathering is another testament to the fact that there is no press freedom in Nigeria. Simply put, journalists are not the “enemies of the people” and the “police are not citizens’ friends”.

We the journalists, having a full knowledge of our constitutional calling as the Fourth Estate of the Realm, will continue to speak and defend the truth. We should not be overcome by forces which are not beyond our power.

WHEN SLAYED PROTESTERS’ MOTHERS SHOWED UP AT LEKKI TOLL PLAZA

On November 19, 2020, Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, claimed in a press conference that the protest at the Lekki Toll Plaza on October 20, 2020, was “bodiless” and “bloodless”.

The minister also went on to brazenly state that no lives were lost that day.

Mohammed continued to hold on to this notion for an additional 365 days until the judicial panel on police brutality set up in Lagos State released a report in November 2021 that clearly showed that protesters were indeed killed at the plaza that night.

The panel also went as far as describing the killings as a “massacre”.

Two years down the line, Mrs. Olabisi Lamidi, mother of Olamilekan Lamidi, one of the protesters who died during the massacre, attended the gathering at the Lekki Toll Plaza to commemorate the second year anniversary of the monumental protest.

While speaking to a group of media outfits including FIJ, Mrs. Lamidi narrated how Olamilekan, then 35, was shot dead by ‘unknown soldiers’.

“In the early hours of October 21, 2020,” she said, “I came down to the Lekki Tollgate on the information that my son had been shot dead.”

“Lo and behold, it was exactly what people told me. I met my son in a pool of his own blood. I took him in my hands. His friends and my younger sister helped me carry him. He was already dead. There’s nothing I could do.

“Whatever has spoilt has spoilt. There is nothing anyone can do against the government.”

Mrs. Lamidi said she wept profusely as she carried her son’s blood-covered corpse in her arms.

Another bereaved mother, who simply identified herself as Mama Victor, said her son, Victor Sunday Baha, also died during the #EndSARS protest.

“I had five kids. Victor happened to be the one who was taking care of me and the family. He was the money who was sending money to us in Akwa-Ibom State to cater for the feeding and school fees of the younger ones,” Mama Victor said.

“Since he died, it has not been easy for her to take care of herself and the other children. I am not really okay. Victor is like the breadwinner of the family since I lost my husband. Whenever I remember the sad experience, I am filled with horrors.”

Mama Victor, who has only seen the photo of her son’s death, is yet to recover his corpse from relevant authorities.

While Mrs. Lamidi said she received a N2 million compensation from the panel for her son’s killing, Mama Victor

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