Lekki Toll Gate shootings: Why Malami should resign – HURIWA

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has charged the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to apologise and resign if he has any honour left.

HURIWA made the call in response to Malami’s comment that gunmen who attacked End SARS protesters at Lekki toll gate Lagos State were not soldiers.

The group said the AGF should either apologise or resign since the Nigerian Army has confirmed that soldiers were deployed to Lekki toll gate.

HURIWA disclosed this in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko.

The statement reads partly: “It was with hearts that were heavy and tragically disappointed at the rate of spread of illogicality as public communication technique that we at the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) read in the popular media of mass communication that the number one chief law officer of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Abubakar Malami, Attorney-General of the federation (AGF), said it is likely that hoodlums wearing military fatigues — and not soldiers — shot #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos state. We indeed saw this statement as an unwarranted irritation and an aggressive form of insults and lack of respect for the innocent peaceful protesters in Lekki Toll Gate Lagos who were on 20th October 2020 despatched to the great World beyond by Men and officers of the military paid with taxpayers money to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria.”

“The Federal Attorney General and minister of justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN) should tender both his apologies and resignation now that it has become authoritatively unambiguous that Nigerian Army indeed were deployed to the lekki Toll Gate Lagos on October 20th 2020 because according to the Rights group, that attempt by the Federal Attorney General to use sophistry to seek to create confusion around the circumstances surrounding the massacre that characterized the deployment of armed soldiers on the ground of the peaceful protests in Lekki Toll Gate Lagos in which undetermined number of Nigerians may have been killed in the ensuing gun shots unleashed allegedly by the soldiers on peaceful protesters in Lekki Toll Gate Lagos.”

The group said the show of shame by the Federal Attorney General and minister of justice Abubakar Malami over this Lekki Toll Gate Lagos issue is intolerable and unacceptable.

Despite Malami’s claim, the 81 Division of the Nigerian Army had admitted that soldiers were deployed to Lekki toll gate.

Brig.-Gen. Ahmed Taiwo, Commander of the 81 Division, Military Intelligence Brigade, Victoria Island, Lagos State while appearing before the Lagos Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution, yesterday, insisted that soldiers fired blank ammunition and not live bullets at the protesters.

He also insisted that contrary to reports, the soldiers did not kill any protester at Lekki toll gate.