The Lagos State Government says it cannot rely on the report of the state Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other matters.
The state Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Moyosore Onigbanjo (SAN), made this disclosure in an interview on Arise News on Wednesday and monitored by Naija News.
Recall that the White Paper on the report of the panel was released on Tuesday night in accordance with the promise earlier made by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
According to the document, the state government disagreed with the panel and rejected its earlier submission that nine persons were killed at the Lekki Toll Gate when soldiers opened fire on protesters last year.
The Sanwo-Olu government in the White Paper also described the claim of killings by the panel as “assumptions and speculations”.
Speaking more on the document, Onigbanjo said the state government could not rely on the report of the panel due to many “contradictions” and “inconsistencies”.
He said: “The panel said they found the report of Professor Obafunwa who deducted autopsy on all the bodies picked up around Lagos during the protest, not just in Lekki; that they found his evidence credible and that there was no evidence to the contrary. Professor Obafunwa said that of all the bodies he conducted autopsies on, three came from Lekki and out of those, only one had gunshot injury. And the panel then said, ‘we believe you and accept your evidence because there is nothing to the contrary.’ It means what Professor Obafunwa said outweighs every other piece of evidence before the panel.”
The commissioner, who is the chairman of the White Paper Committee, added that the findings of the panel could not be supported by evidence and the conclusion of the report cannot be explained.
He said: “Then the panel then goes on to say there were nine dead. If you look at that page where the deads from the Lekki tollgate were listed, they did not explain how they arrived at that conclusion, the names, who shot them and when they were shot. So that’s a contradiction because what Professor Obafunwa said is different from the conclusion they are now reaching. And there were so many others.
“They also said one Nathanial Solomon died at Lekki tollgate. It also turns out that Nathaniel Solomon was a witness before them and handed a petition in respect of his late brother.
“Those contradictions and many more made that particular finding unreliable. Because for a finding that somebody died at a scene to be acceptable, there must be no doubt. What the panel did create doubts; it created gaps in their story of nine deaths. And once there are doubts, the doubts are usually resolved in favour of the person you’re accusing to have murdered or killed those people — because of this, that particular finding was rejected.”
Onigbanjo, however, disclosed that the two panel’s reports would be made public soon to give Nigerians the opportunity to read them and make their own decisions.
He added: “We are also going to release the two reports of the panel to the public to judge by themselves. So we are not just going to be a case of Lagos state government analysing this in itself and coming to its conclusions. We are going to make them available to everybody to read it.”
This article was originally published on Naija News