Moyosore Onigbanjo (SAN) is Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice. In this interview, Onigbanjo speaks on the claims of contradictions in the report of Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters. The panel was presided over by Justice Doris Okuwobi (rtd).

There are claims of contradictions in the report of the panel set up to look into policemen abuse of Nigerians and what happened at Lekki Toll Gate on October 20, 2020. What is the position of Lagos State government?

The position of Lagos State government is based on the report submitted by the panel itself. We went through the report and what we saw in reference to what you said is that in one instance, I think page 288 paragraph M of the report, the judicial panel said that they found the evidence of Professor Obafunwa, the pathologist who conducted autopsy on all the bodies picked all over Lagos during the EndSars event, not just at Lekki but state wide, they found his evidence credible and that there was no evidence to the contrary.

Now, what did Prof Obafunwa say? Prof. Obafunwa said that all the bodies he conducted autopsy on came from Lekki, and that out of the three, only one had gunshot injury. And the panel said “we believe you, we accept your evidence because there is nothing to the contrary”.

So, in law, if you put that on the imaginary scale, what Prof. Obafunwa said outweighs any other evidence before the panel. It even goes beyond that, they said there was nothing to the contrary. Then the panel goes on to say that there were nine bodies. If you look at that page where they listed out 11 deceased persons from Lekki Toll Gate, they didn’t explain how they arrived at that conclusion, or how they came about the names or who shot them or when they were shot.

That is a contradiction because what you say you believe Prof Obafunwa to have said is different from the conclusion that you have written and there are so many others. For example, they said nine people died and they awarded compensation to only one. If you believe that nine persons died, why are you not awarding compensation to the other eight people? They also said one Nathaniel Solomon died; that he was deceased at Lekki Toll Gate.

But it turned out that Nathaniel Solomon was a witness before them who had a petition in respect of his late brother. An allegation that someone was murdered is not one to be made lightly. In fact, in criminal law jurisprudence, you must prove it beyond reasonable doubt, but when you have this inconsistency, is Nathaniel Solomon dead it alive? Did one person die at Lekki or did nine people die? Those contradictions and many more made the particular finding unreliable. For a finding that someone died at a scene to be acceptable, there must be no doubt.

What the panel did was to create doubt and the doubt is usually resolved in favor of the person that you are accusing to have murdered or killed those people. So, it was because of that, that the particular report finding was rejected. We have listed out in the White Paper some of these contradictions. We are also going to release the two reports of the panel for the public to judge by themselves. So, it is not going to be a case of Lagos State government analyzing the report and coming to its own conclusion.

We are going to make them (reports) available to everybody, read and see how you can resolve the conflict between saying “I agree with the pathologist that one person died and was picked up on the 21st of October 2020” and then going on to say somewhere else that nine persons died and then not offering any explanation on how did these persons die, who killed them, who shot them and when were they killed?

Is it the position of Lagos State government that there was no massacre at Lekki Toll Gate?

The position of Lagos State government is based on the finding of the panel itself and it’s not that the state government just conjured this from the air. We looked at the report, that is what the panel itself said, that one person at Lekki Toll Gate died; then it went in to say that nine people died. So, it is not Lagos State that it’s saying it. It’s is what the panel said after it had reviewed the evidence of Professor Obafunwa. They said it, we didn’t say it. If you want me to read it out for you, I will read it out; so to say that Lagos State government is the one saying that, no!

I would like to ask you, is it that nothing happened on the 20th of October, 2020? And can we also talk about the fact, as presented in the report, that the panel said that police officers in that area would normally collect 15 to 20 rounds of bullets, but, on the night of the 20th, some collected 60 rounds while some also collected 75 rounds of bullets. What happened that night?

It’s not that we are living in denial, not at all. The report itself which I urge you all to find time to read, the two are about 550 pages. One, the military was at Lekki, two, they fired gunshots, but the forensic expert called by the panel itself said it couldn’t determine that live rounds were fired, although General Taiwo said that the army went there with blanks and live bullets.

Regarding your question about the police taking more rounds on the night of the incident, if you read the report, the movement register shows that one policeman was assigned to Lekki, it is there. So, even if they took more rounds, you will still have to show that these rounds were actually to kill ABCD. So, it is not just to say that they took more rounds, you took have to tell us what they did with the rounds.

• Interview first aired on Arise Television

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