With the police under attack, it apparently had no choice but to request the help of the military in enforcing the curfew. Obviously alarmed, the state government declared a curfew.

So bad did things get that Police stations were torched, policemen killed and police armories looted with criminals carting away arms and ammunition. By October 20th, law and order had broken down in large swathes of Lagos. The longer the protests lasted however, the more extraneous forces intervened and systematically hijacked the protests on a steadily expanding scale across the country. They were defiant and remained on the streets even though as peaceful and restrained as ever. SARS was disbanded and the other demands of the protesters accepted in principle.īut then, the protesters introduced new demands. Within days, an ordinarily obdurate Federal Government had acceded to their requests. What are the facts of the matter? The Lekki Toll Gate was one of the two major sites in Lagos of the massive #endSARS youth protests which had gripped the national and global imagination for two weeks till the night of October 20.Įxceedingly well organized, focused and disciplined, the protesters had conducted themselves with remarkable decorum, decency and dignity in pursuit of their demand that the dreaded police Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) should be disbanded and fundamental police reforms instituted. Did such an event involving deaths on an industrial scale occur at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on the night of Tuesday, October 20? Repeated reports in the local and international media indicate that this was the case. One dictionary defines massacre as ‘an act of complete destruction’. It refers to a large scale, coldblooded murder of human beings. When I checked, synonyms for the word, massacre, include bloodbath, butchery, carnage, death, holocaust, or slaughter. This is a weighty word that surely ought not to be used lightly or frivolously. (Published in The Nation newspaper of Saturday, October 31st, 2020) FACTS AND FANTASIES OF THE ‘LEKKI MASSACRE’

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