By Chinelo Obogo and Romanus Okoye

The ghost of the EndSARS protest is not in a hurry to rest as the decision by the Lagos Judicial Panel of Inquiry to re-open Lekki Toll gate, the site where officers of the Nigerian Army opened fire on protesters in Lagos, is fueling another action.
As support for a planned protest against the directive gained momentum, a group trending under the hashtag #DefendLagos has vowed to oppose any form of protest at the toll gate which was shut to operations in October 2020.
The hashtag for a planned rally tagged #OccupyLekkiTollGate scheduled for Saturday, February 13, went viral calling youths to converge at the tollgate to protest the decision of the panel.
However, that same evening, posters of a counter rally hit social media platforms, with users trending the tag #DefendLagos, urging Lagosians to ensure that further destruction of live and property is not repeated in Lagos and also called on youths to converge at the tollgate same day.
In December 2020, the Lekki Concession Company (LCC), operators of the toll gate, had urged the panel to take control of the plaza for insurance and claims and repair and on February 6, five of the nine-member panel, including the chairman of the panel, Justice Doris Okuwobi, voted to return the control of the tollgate to the LCC days after the Nigerian Army pulled out of the panel following the appointment of the former service chiefs as non-career ambassadors. Other members of the panel besides Justice Okuwobi who voted in favour of re-opening were Taiwo Lakanu, Lucas Koyejo, Segun Awosanya and Oluwatoyin Odusanya. They stated that a forensic analysis on the venue of the shooting had been carried out, and there was no need to keep the place closed to operations.
Members of the panel who voted against the re-opening are human rights lawyer, Ebun Olu-Adegboruwa, Olururinu Oduala, Temitope Majekodunmi and Patience Patrick Udoh. They disagreed with the approval, insisting that such an action would hinder ongoing investigations. They said that from the Forensic Report submitted by the experts employed by the panel, the LCC management has failed to provide information which includes access to servers, those who ordered the extraction of the CCTV footage, method used for the extraction, date and time of the extraction and other pieces of information that would be useful for investigations.
Political activist and former deputy national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Timi Frank, condemned the re-opening.
In a statement, he accused the panel of bias and acting the script of Lagos State and the Federal Government who he said consider the revelations emanating from the panel as a source of continuous embarrassment.
But the Lagos state chapter of the APC accused Frank of calling for mayhem and anarchy.
In a statement by the publicity secretary, Seye Oladejo, the party said the APC’s earlier position that the protest was orchestrated and sponsored is being buttressed by the renewed efforts to make the state ungovernable.
But human rights lawyer, Abdul Mahmood, advised that rather than protest and endanger lives, youths should seek redress in court, saying that despite the fact that protests are democratic, in this case, it would be counter-productive as those who protested are still suffering from injuries sustained during the protest.

 

 

He said: “Your comrades are still lying cold in mortuaries, you have not arranged burials with candlelight memorials in their honour; some are hurtling limbless into judicial panels, you are not talking of how to get them prosthetic legs. Parents are searching for missing comrades. The reopening of your site of action can be fought by judicial review of the decision of the judicial panel in the High Court. Organise, mobilise the best activist- lawyers and turn the court into your new site of action. Let the state close the court when you turn in numbers. Don’t let folks who hide in their keypads, and who’d lie that they were in the streets with you disguised, goad you.”