… Challenge action in court, AG advises promoters
LINUS CHIBUIKE
THE Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Moyosore Onigbanjo, has said that the state has no hand in the freezing of #EndSARS campaigners’ accounts.
He therefore advised affected promoters to seek redress in court and allow the Lagos Panel of Inquiry to continue its work of getting justice for victims of police brutality, urging the two youth representatives on the panel to return to sittings.
Onigbanjo said the Lagos State Government had no control over the Central Bank of Nigeria, which secured the order to freeze the affected accounts.
He spoke on Channels TV’s Politics Today programme on Monday.
The Attorney-General said, “The representatives of the youths on the panel who were affected by the CBN decision to freeze these accounts should bear two things in mind: one is that if the panel does not form a quorum, all the victims of SARS abuses in Lagos, who they have been clamouring for, will not get the compensation which they seek and which the state government thinks they deserve.
“This problem is not the state’s making. The state has no control over the CBN. The state is interested in ensuring that people who suffered abuses in Lagos State get the compensation which the panel will award to them.”
Onigbanjo noted that there had been so many allegations about what actually happened at the Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020, adding that the crucial investigation would not be able to go on if the panel did not form a quorum.
He said, “I would be urging the affected panel member and the other youth representative to resume their seats at the panel. The CBN got a court order against their accounts and I believe that decision can be challenged on its own.
“They can go to court and challenge the decision of the CBN and at the same time, let the panel continue the work which impacts on the lives of so many people in Lagos State and which also touches on what happened at the Lekki tollgate.”
The Point had reported that one of the promoters of the #EndSARS protest, who is a member of the Lagos State Panel of Inquiry on police brutality, Oluwarinu Oduala, had said that the Federal Government disappointed her by clamping down on #EndSARS promoters.
Oduala, who said she had sacrificed her education, personal life and family to be a member of the panel, said she took up the role to make peace and to ensure the youths understood that the only way to create a better and safer Nigeria was to do things lawfully.
She, however, said that the freezing of the accounts of promoters of the protest negated the idea behind the Federal Government’s peace making efforts.
On Saturday, the Chairman of the Inquiry Panel, retired Justice Doris Okuwobi, had suspended its sitting, when Oduala and Temitope Majekodunmi boycotted the panel in protest against the freezing of #EndSARS promoters’ accounts.