On the night of 20 October 2020, at about 6:50p.m., members of the

Nigerian Army The Nigerian Army (NA) is the land force of the Nigerian Armed Forces. It is governed by the Nigerian Army Council (NAC). The Chief of Army Staff is the highest ranking military officer of the Nigerian Army. History Formation The Nigerian ...

opened fire on unarmed End SARS protesters at the Lekki toll gate in

Lagos State Lagos State ( yo, Ìpínlẹ̀ Èkó) is a States of Nigeria, state in South West (Nigeria), southwestern Nigeria. Of the 36 States of Nigeria, states, it is both the List of Nigerian states by population, most populous and List of Nigerian state ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

stated that at least 12 protesters were killed during the shooting. A day after the incident, on 21 October, the governor of

Babajide Sanwo-olu Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (born 25 June 1968) is a Nigerian politician and the current Governor of Lagos State. He became governor under the platform of the All Progressives Congress after contesting and unexpectedly winning the gubernatorial p ...

, initially denied reports of any loss of lives, but later admitted in an interview with a CNN journalist that "only two persons were killed". The Nigerian Army initially denied involvement in the shooting, but later stated that it had deployed soldiers to the toll gate on the orders of the governor of Lagos State. A month after the shooting, following a

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

documentary on the shooting, the Nigerian Army admitted to the Lagos Judiciary panel of inquiry into the shooting that it had deployed its personnel to the toll gate with both live and blank bullets.

Background

Previous Nigerian Army crackdowns

The

has been known to open fire and kill unarmed civilians in previous incidents, most notably was the

2015 Zaria massacre The Zaria massacre (also known as Buhari Massacre) was a massacre carried out by the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria, on Saturday, 12 December 2015, against Shia Muslims, mostly members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. End SARS is a decentralised

social movement A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to resist or undo one. It is a type of group action and may ...

and series of mass protests against

police brutality Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...

. The slogan calls for the disbanding of the

Special Anti-Robbery Squad The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was a Nigerian Police Force unit created in late 1992 to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling, and firearms. It was part of the Force Criminal Investiga ...

(SARS). In 2016, a human rights activist, Segun Awosanya popularly known as ''Segalink'' started EndSARS campaign on social media prompting police authority to announce reform of the police unit but nothing was achieved at the time. In 2018, Nigerian rapper Michael Ugochukwu Stephens, known by his stage name

Ruggedman Michael Ugochukwu Stephens, known professionally as Ruggedman, is a Nigerian rapper from Ohafia, Abia State. Career A graduate of political science from Lagos State University, Ọ̀jọ́, Ruggedman started exploring music in 1999. He produ ...

, joined the campaign to end police brutality releasing a single titled, "Is Police Your Friend?" The protests became more popular in 2017 on Twitter using the hashtag #EndSARS to demand the Nigerian government disband and reform the police unit. Within a few days of renewed protests, some claimed victory when, on Sunday, 11 October 2020, the Nigerian Police Force announced it would be dissolving SARS. However, many noted similar promises had been made in recent years, and that the government planned to reassign and review SARS officers to medical centers rather than remove them entirely. The Lekki toll gate shooting promptly ended the protest movement.

Attack

On the night of 20 October 2020, Nigerian Armed Forces shot at unarmed protesters at the Lekki toll gate in

Lagos Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the List of cities in Africa by population, second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national ca ...

. According to

, shortly before the shooting, CCTV cameras were allegedly removed from the toll gate. The Lagos State Government subsequently said these were laser cameras and not CCTV cameras as earlier publicized on social media. Also, the electricity supplying lights to the toll gate was cut and the advertisement billboards, which are owned and maintained by Loatsad Media, were turned off. Loatsad Media stated, "On Tuesday 0 Octoberwhen the curfew was announced we heeded the governor's warnings and didn't want our staff in any danger, hence by 3pm, our staff had been ordered to leave the site and the board was switched off based on the governor's curfew request." MTN and Airtel experienced outages during the protests. MTN Nigeria apologized later that night for the loss of coverage at the time of the shooting. On 21 October, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), released a statement explaining that network downtime experienced during the massacre was a result of damages to fiber cables across major routes in the city resulting in congestion and poor network services. Following a message spread on social media that protesters would be safe if they sang the national anthem and waved the Nigerian flag. Protesters sat down with locked arms singing the Nigerian anthem and waving the Nigerian flag in respite. Twenty armed military personnel approached and from video of the event shows them raising their voices in song as they are shot at by the armed soldiers. A popular Nigerian DJ, DJ Switch, live-streamed the event on

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

during and in the aftermath of the shooting. In the video, they attempted to remove a bullet from the leg of a man who was shot, tying a Nigerian flag around his leg. Nigerian disc jockey DJ Switch made a livestream video of the shooting on her Instagram account. Though many other eyewitness videos and footages surfaced in the aftermath of the shooting, the livestream would prove to be decisive evidence of the shooting. In a video made on October 23, she clarified that she witnessed the shooting of seven people at the time she was live-streaming on Instagram. She said that armed soldiers and police officers shot at her and other peaceful #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki toll gate on the night of 20 October and that among them were officers of the disbanded SARS unit. She also said that the number of the dead increased to fifteen, but that she did not get a chance to record further, as her phone battery had died. She further said at least 15 people were killed in the shootings and that she and other survivors took the victims’ bodies to the soldiers who took them away. She has since left the country for Canada following threats to her life. Lagos-based risk advisory, SBM Intelligence estimated, based on witnesses and emergency services, that at least forty-six people were killed around Nigeria on Tuesday, 20 October according. In the hours after the shooting, People's Gazette, a local newspaper, reported that the army had tried to give nine bodies to the police to help them bury. The police rejected the bodies. NIGERIA-PROTEST

In an independent analysis of the attack,

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

investigated various clips from social media and concluded that indeed the massacre took place in Lekki. A detailed report by Nigerian newspaper,

Premium Times ''Premium Times'' is a Nigerian online newspaper based in Abuja in the Federal Capital Territory. It was launched in 2011. The online medium is notable for investigative journalism and Reports among other fields. Awards and nominations In 2013 ...

, established the events that led to the massacre, an attempted cover-up, and abandonment of victims by the Lagos State Government.

Casualties

In a report on 21 October, Amnesty International stated that at least 12 protesters were killed in what the organization described as "extrajudicial executions". A former marketer with Etisalat Telecommunications Company (now 9Mobile) was reported to be one of the casualties. Denying this, Lagos State Governor,

Babajide Sanwo-Olu Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (born 25 June 1968) is a Nigerian politician and the current Governor of Lagos State. He became governor under the platform of the All Progressives Congress after contesting and unexpectedly winning the gubernatorial p ...

, claimed that no one was killed at Lekki and later posted on Twitter that one person died at the hospital as a result of blunt force trauma to the head, and that the connection to the protest was under investigation. The Nigerian military denied responsibility for the shooting, tweeting that media reports were "fake news". According to witnesses, the military did not allow ambulances to provide aid and removed corpses from the scene of the shooting. In testimony during April and May 2021 before the Lagos State Judicial Panel, a witness stated that by her reckoning based in part on video evidence at least 10 people died in the shooting. According to

reporting, they could count five bodies from the videos with many additional injuries.

Aftermath

On the day of the shooting, on 20 October 2020, the government imposed a city-wide round-the-clock curfew in Lagos which was to start at 4p.m. which had only been announced earlier that day around 1p.m. via social media. Protesters defied the curfew although it was later extended till 9p.m. by the Lagos State Governor, staging several demonstrations, and gunfire could be heard throughout the city. Several fires burned throughout Lagos after the shooting. A few hours after the massacre, the Lagos State Governor visited the injured victims in hospitals in Lagos. In a statement on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

, he attributed the massacre to "forces beyond our direct control." The following days after the Lekki massacre witnessed a lot of violence by hoodlums not associated with the #EndSars protest. The looting of shops, burning and destruction of properties of private individuals and government in some parts of Lagos began late in the night of the massacre and spilled into the following morning until military personnel were deployed to the streets of Lagos to restore calm and order.

Reactions

In a statement made on 22 October 2020, the President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari called for calm and said he would promote police reforms; however, he did not issue a statement or acknowledge the massacre at the Lekki toll gate. U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden called on the Nigerian government to cease the "violent crackdown on protesters". Former U.S. Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

tweeted that Nigerian authorities should "stop killing young #EndSARS protesters". United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet stated that "There is little doubt that this was a case of excessive use of force, resulting in unlawful killings with live ammunition, by Nigerian armed forces". U.N. Secretary-General

António Guterres António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres ( , ; born 30 April 1949) is a Portuguese politician and diplomat. Since 2017, he has served as secretary-general of the United Nations, the ninth person to hold this title. A member of the Portuguese Socia ...

said that Nigerians' right "to protest peacefully needs to be guaranteed" and that "police brutality needs to stop, and those responsible for acts of such dramatic violence are made accountable". The violence was strongly condemned by the chairman of the

African Union Commission The Commission of the African Union acts as the executive/administrative branch or secretariat of the African Union (and is somewhat analogous to the European Commission). It consists of a number of Commissioners dealing with different areas of ...

. UK Foreign Secretary

Dominic Raab Dominic Rennie Raab (; born 25 February 1974) is a British politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Secretary of State for Justice, and Lord Chancellor since October 2022, having previously served from 2021 to ...

expressed deep concern and alarm at the reports of civilian deaths, calling for an end to the violence. Nigerian international footballer Odion Ighalo said he was ashamed of the Nigerian government. Members of Nigeria women's national football team, including

Ngozi Okobi-Okeoghene Ngozi Sonia Okobi-Okeoghene (; born 14 December 1993) is a Nigerian professional footballer who plays as a forward for Swedish club Eskilstuna United DFF and the Nigeria women's national team. International career Ngozi played the 2008 FIFA U ...

, condemned the massacre. In solidarity and to pay his respect to the "fallen heroes", Nigerian musician Burna Boy released a song titled ''20:10:20'', marking the day of the Lekki massacre. On the 21 November 2020, 34 days after the incident, the

admitted after weeks of denial that its servicemen deployed in military vehicles. It also said the soldiers were given live and blank rounds of

ammunition Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weap ...

, but stopped short of clarifying who gave the order. This statement comes after weeks of denial by the Nigerian Army that its servicemen were never deployed at the Lekki Toll Gate on the night of the masscre. At least six protesters were beaten and 13 others were arrested at the bridge site on 13 February

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

Judicial Panel of Inquiry

On 26 October, the Lagos State government constituted a Judicial Panel of Inquiry to investigate happenings during the EndSARS protests and to establish who shot protesters, who were affected, how much compensation victims should get, and who should be prosecuted. The eight-member panel is headed by Doris Okuwobi, a retired justice. The members of the panel were Retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Fredrick Taiwo Lakanu a lawyer, Mr. Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa SAN and Ms. Patience Patrick Udoh both practicing lawyers in Lagos were appointed as representatives of Civil Society. Segun Awosanya (Segalink) one of the initiators of the EndSARS campaign was appointed to the panel representing human rights activists. Mr. Lucas Koyejo was appointed as the representative of the National Human Rights Commission and Mrs. Toyin Odunsanya, now a Judge of the High Court of Lagos, was appointed by Lagos State Government from the Directorate of Citizens Right, Lagos State Ministry of Justice Rinu Oduala and Majekodunmi Temitope are representatives of the youth. Following a call for submission of petitions against police brutality by the panel, several victims sent in damning reports of torture, killings, and other human rights abuses by the police. During a visit to the scene of the Lekki Toll Gate massacre, the panel found spent bullet shells. The panel was denied access to a military hospital suspected of holding bodies of the victims for over 30 minutes but when the panel eventually gained access into the facility it was found purportedly under renovation and empty. On 30 November 2020, The Nigerian Army admitted that its soldiers were armed with live ammunition when they opened fire on protesters at the demonstration in Lagos. Brigadier Ahmed Taiwo, Commander of the 81 Military Intelligence Brigade while giving a testimony to the Judicial Panel equally alleged that The Nigerian Army was called upon to intervene by the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Taiwo added that Sanwo-Olu called the Chief of Army Staff and the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 81 Division, claiming that the Police had been "overrun". The report of the forensic analysis conducted by Sentinel Forensics employed by the panel to examine the evidence submitted by the Nigerian Army, bullet casings discovered by the panel at the scene, and tape of the CCTV at the toll gate showed that the police and the army officers continued firing at protesters even as they were running away. The panel eventually found that nine people were killed. The Nigerian government rejected the report, with

Lai Mohammed Layiwola "Lai" Mohammed (born 6 December 1951) is a Nigerian lawyer and politician. He is currently the Minister of Information and Culture, a position he has held since November 2015. He is also the former National publicity secretary of the ...

attributing media reactions to the shooting as "the triumph of fake news and the intimidation of a silent majority by a vociferous lynch mob".

CNN documentary

On November 18, a month after the incident,

aired a six-minute documentary on the shooting, the independent investigation showed geolocated photographs of victims and eyewitness accounts, as well as the families of victims, alongside verified trended videos of the shooting using timestamps and data from video files. CNN said that Nigerian authorities refused to comment when they were contacted for clarifications. The documentary also revealed that in collaboration with the

Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Balkan Insight is a website of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) that focuses on news, analysis, commentary and investigative reporting from southeast Europe. It is run by journalists in southeast Europe. BIRN was founded in 2004 ...

, CNN was able to establish that several of the bullet casings from the Lekki Toll Gate, originated from

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...

from where Nigeria had imported bullets every year between 2005 and 2016. The documentary has given rise to another wave of outrage, this time mostly towards the Nigerian authorities' changing narrative in the face of naked evidence. In its response, the

insists that its members were 'professional in their conduct' and did not breach rules of engagement. Nigeria's Minister of Information,

, accused CNN of 'irresponsible journalism' and described the documentary of the product of fake news and disinformation. On November 24, as part of its investigations into the shooting, CNN obtained and released CCTV footages from government surveillance cameras overlooking the toll gate presented to the Lagos Judiciary panel of inquiry investigating police brutality, the abuses of the disbanded SARS and the toll gate shooting. The CCTV footage and other footages from the scene at the time showed soldiers shooting at protesters from both ends of the Toll Gate. Corroborating a previous testimony given by the Lekki Concession Company to the panel, the footage stopped at about 8 pm because the CCTV had been tampered with, ostensibly to provide cover for the shooting. Though yet to provide any counter evidence, Nigerian authorities continue to deny that soldiers shot at protesters.

DJ Switch

On 9 November 2020, 20 days after the massacre, the disc jockey DJ Switch who gained nationwide fame for her live-stream of the shooting, was granted right of asylum in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

after multiple threats on her life, with her close friend Salami Eric Adomokhar, reportedly missing. Protests have continued accordingly, as the Nigerian state has maintained a pattern of violent repression, including the killing of demonstrators. Unconfirmed reports say that she narrated her ordeal before the Sub-committee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development of the Canadian Parliament.

2021 End SARS Memorial protest

In the aftermath of End SARS protest, End SARS Activists announced that there would be a memorial to mark the Lekki Shootings. On October 19, 2021,

Mr Macaroni Adebowale "Debo" Adedayo (born 3 May 1993), known by his stage name Mr Macaroni, is a Nigerian actor, content creator and citizen activist. A trained thespian, his popularity grew from his comic skits on social media, where he plays the role of ...

and

Falz Folarin Falana (born 27 October 1990), better known by his stage name Falz, is a Nigerian rapper, songwriter and actor who began his career while in secondary school after forming a group called The School Boys with his friend before his profe ...

announced that a protest would be carried out in vehicles, with respect to the message by the Lagos state

Police force The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

which prohibited any form of protest. Protests took place mostly in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, among others.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lekki shooting 2020 mass shootings in Africa 2020 murders in Nigeria 2020s massacres in Nigeria 21st century in Lagos State End SARS Lekki Mass murder in 2020 October 2020 crimes in Africa October 2020 events in Nigeria Political violence in Nigeria Protest-related deaths Massacres committed by Nigeria