The Osun State chapter of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR, has called on local and international human rights organisations to demand justice for the victims of the 2020 Lekki Tollgate #EndSARS shooting.
The appeal is coming as Nigerians commemorate the third anniversary of the protests.
The Osun CDHR, in a joint statement by Emmanuel Olowu and Bamitale Olufadeju, Chairman and Secretary, respectively, also demanded that the Federal Government should make it mandatory that the Nigerian Flag is lowered to half mast on October 20, each year, to honour those that lost their lives during the protests.
The statement reads, “It is exactly the third year of commemoration of the Lekki #EndSARS shooting which the remembrance of the victims is gradually fading away in the mind of the Nigerian citizens while the nation has not also taken the step of documenting the event into the historical archives of the nation.
“However, it should be noted that the letter written by the Lagos State Government with reference number LA/PPA/NOOBJ/VOI_22, 213, directed to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry Of Health, titled LETTER OF NO OBJECTION, MASS BURIAL FOR 103, THE YEAR 2020 ENDSARS VICTIMS and dated 19th of July, 2023, is a confirmation that the Nigerian military shot and killed peaceful protesters
“It should be clear that the letter is an indictment of the Lagos State Government, the Nigerian Military Force and the Nigeria Government
“As a human rights organization, we believe that it defies logic for a reasonable government that was to protect the life and property of the citizens to claim that EndSARS protesters were not killed but to later claim that 103 dead bodies were picked across Lagos State within 19th and 27th of October 2020 and that a whooping sum of Six One Million Two Hundred and Eighty-Five Thousand Naira Only (₦61,285,000.000.00) was to be used for their mass burial.
“We hereby use this medium to call the attention of local and international human rights organizations to demand justice for the victims.
“While we demand that the Nigerian government should make it mandatory that the Nigerian flag is lowered on yearly bases to commemorate the souls that were lost in the saga.”
