Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, has said that the leaked Lagos State Government memo, revealing the secret mass burial of 103 victims from the October 2020 EndSARS protest, is just a tip of an iceberg and that there are several yet-to-be-revealed surprises.
Adegboruwa spoke about this matter in an interview on Channels Television’s Law Weekly on Saturday.
As a member of the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other matters, Adegboruwa’s presence is subject to recall.
According to him, it is a universally acknowledged fact in Nigeria that there were fatalities on the night of October 20, 2020.
The Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos became the site of a confrontation on the night of October 20, 2020, as soldiers arrived to disperse the gathering of youths protesting police brutality and extrajudicial killings.
Read also: 2023: Why Muslim-Muslim Ticket Cannot Fly Now – Adegboruwa
He said, ‘The leaked memo from the Ministry of Health of Lagos State is one of the many surprises that people will still see in the course of time so long as the government has not come to terms with the reality of the events of October 20th, 2020.’
But Adegboruwa said, ‘May be the challenge would be the quantum or the number of such fatalities.’
‘But to blanketly assert that there was no death or there was no blood spilt in any way at all as a result in particular of gunshots by members of the Nigerian Army is to do a disservice to the souls of those people who are affected.’
The incident, which garnered widespread controversy, elicited strong reactions and censure from human rights organizations worldwide, including Amnesty International.
Outrage swept through the public following the emergence of a leaked memo, which was addressed to the Lagos State Ministry of Health and exposed the state government’s approval of N61,285,000 for the mass burial of 103 individuals identified as victims of the 2020 EndSARS protests.
Dated July 19, 2023, the memo laid out a clear plan for the processing of funds, detailing the required actions following Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s sanction.
Last Sunday, the Lagos State Ministry of Health officially confirmed the authenticity of the letter in a statement.
Amidst the ongoing debate, the Lagos State Ministry of Health reaffirmed that the bodies were not linked to the Lekki toll gate incident. Instead, they clarified that the Lagos State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit (SEHMU) collected these bodies from several locations, such as Fagba, Ketu, Ikorodu, Orile, Ajegunle, Abule-Egba, Ikeja, Ojota, Ekoro, Ogba, Isolo, and Ajah.