According to the testimonies, soldiers of the Nigerian Army, under the guide of Muhammadu Buhari’s government, have shot live bullets at peaceful protestors in Lagos and carried bodies away by trucks.
“The soldiers kept shooting at random, and I saw people falling to the ground, injured or lifeless,” said Dabiraoluwa Ayuku in her testimony, according to Reuters.
Her account was one of three seen by Reuters, and submitted to the Lagos panel investigating allegations that the army and police opened fire on and killed people protesting at the city’s Lekki Toll Gate against police brutality.
The protests, the worst since the country’s return to civilian rule in 1999, climaxed in that incident on Oct. 20, when rights group Amnesty International said soldiers and police killed at least 12 protesters in two districts.
Both the army and police have denied killing demonstrators. In testimony to the panel on Saturday, Brigadier General Ahmed Taiwo, who heads the army’s 81st Division in Lagos, said soldiers fired blank rounds only, into the air, to disperse protesters.
Two of the civilian panel witness said some troops fired into the air, but all three said other soldiers shot peaceful protesters, injuring or killing them.
“I remember a particular soldier that kept dancing while he shot,” said Ayuku.
Soldiers removed some protesters’ corpses in vans, said two witnesses, one adding that the troops took away bullet casings.
MAH/PR/FNA13990825000405
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