Today marks one year that some youths were brutally murdered by Nigerian military personnel that laid siege at the popular Lekki Tollgate, the most pronounced venue of last year’s #EndSARS protest.
The #EndSARS protest was a decentralized social movement that started with a handful of youths protesting against police brutality and demanding an end to the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS), a police unit notorious for human rights abuses.
Although the movement started back in 2017 as a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #EndSARS, it transformed to a massive offline social movement following the failure of the government to address issues of brutality, extortion and extra judicial killings masterminded by the special police unit.
The movement spread across the country, and even across the globe with some Nigerians in diaspora showing solidarity with the protesting young Nigerians back home.
On the infamous night, the military opened fire on young, unarmed and unsuspecting youths at the Lekki Tollgate, killing and injuring many.
Various credible investigations reveal that no fewer than 20 youths were killed by the military on that unfortunate night.
Expectedly, the governments, both state and federal initially denied any knowledge of what happened. Although they would later admit the presence of the military at the Tollgate that night, the governments were yet to come forward with explicit details of that operation.
This is one year but no arrests have been made, and no one has been held accountable or made to pay for the killings.
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