A call has gone out to President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately sack and ensure the arrest and prosecution of the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.
The call was made on Tuesday in a statement by the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA).
HURIWA spoke against the background of the revelations made in the report submitted on Monday to the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu by the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other matters.
While the Minister had on several occasions after the Lekki Toll Gate shootings of October 20, 2020, insisted that no life was lost, and even demanded apologies from persons and organizations with reports on loss of lives during the incident, the report of the panel led by Justice Doris Okuwobi disclosed that not less than eleven people were killed at the Lekki tollgate incident.
The report added that at least 48 protesters were either shot dead, injured with bullet wounds, or assaulted by soldiers.
Reacting to the latest development, HURIWA has likened the actions of Alhaji Mohammed to the denial of the Holocaust of the 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler.
The rights group said if the President refuses to take action, he would be forever remembered as the leader who oversaw the genocide of young Nigerian protesters and the generations unborn will never forgive him.
The human rights association, therefore, “is asking President Muhammadu Buhari as a biological father of many well-educated children, to order the arrest and prosecution of his minister of information Lai Mohammed for committing a grave and heartless offence that is equivalent to the denial of the Holocaust of the 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler which is punishable by nearly half a century of incarceration. ”
HURIWA “is also commending the brave members and Chairperson of the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on the #ENDSARS PROTESTS especially the circumstances surrounding the massive cases of extrajudicial killings by the Army and armed police when these armed forces opened fire with lethal weapons targeted at the unarmed protesters.”
The rights group added that “President Muhammadu Buhari must note that as a Father of many Children he needs to ensure that impunity is never tolerated especially the extrajudicial killings of very youngsters of Nigeria by the Army just for protesting police brutality.”
