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The panel can be charged by the Lagos State authorities with probing the shooting of protesters on the Lekki toll gate on the night of October 20 and into the early hours of October 21.
CNN obtained a replica of the CCTV footage forward of the panel’s sitting on Saturday and matched it as much as verified footage revealed as half of an investigation final week into the occasions on the toll gate.
The footage corroborates the timings CNN reported for the gunshots fired by the military. It additionally reveals troopers approaching protesters and firing pictures.
What is maybe most notable is what’s lacking.
At 6:47 p.m., the second when CNN has video of the military showing to fireside straight at protesters, the surveillance digicam pans away from the realm.
The surveillance digicam pans left and tilts up earlier than reframing and struggling for focus. It is unclear if the digicam pans away intentionally or whether or not the pan away is a poor alternative by the CCTV operator.
The surveillance footage as soon as once more raises questions about the investigation into what occurred on the Lekki toll gate protest — and why surveillance video from the night doesn’t present a extra full image.
On Monday, the UK parliament debated a petition looking for to sanction the Nigerian authorities and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) over alleged human rights abuses.
The overseas workplace additionally launched a press release saying: “The Foreign Secretary has been clear that the Nigerian government must urgently investigate reports of brutality at the hands of the security forces and hold those responsible to account.
“It is vital that the police in Nigeria respect human rights. We have been working with Nigeria to help reforms to make sure this occurs.”
The police said it would not comment until after the judicial inquiry. However, in a tweet in early November, it denied shooting at protesters.
“…our law enforcement officials by no means resorted to make use of of illegal pressure or shooting on the protesters as alleged within the report.”
Since the shooting, which brought an end to the protest movement in Africa’s most populous country, the army has made many shifting statements about how it engaged with the peaceful demonstrators.
The army has repeatedly said the soldiers deployed to the toll gate fired into the air and not at protesters directly. The army did not respond to multiple requests from CNN for comment. On Twitter, it repeatedly stamped news accounts of the shooting as “Fake News.”
However, social media footage — submitted by the army’s own counsel to the panel on Saturday — featured an eyewitness saying, “they’re shooting at protesters.” It appeared to be the same video that CNN geo-located which was shot from the nearby Oriental Hotel in Lekki on October 20.
“For the safety of the pressure, we carried reside bullets in case they have been attacked. But the troopers who fashioned the firing crew, who fired as you might see within the video […] carried magazines charged with clean ammunition.”
CNN’s investigation had revealed the use of live ammunition at the toll gate, based on analysis carried out by ballistics experts and conversations with military sources.
The army has insisted that only blanks were used.
Adesina Ogunlana, a lawyer who is representing some of the “#EndSARS” protesters at the judicial panel, told CNN another protester died recently after falling into a coma from injuries sustained on October 20.
“I noticed one of them that was shot at and brought to Reddington (Hospital),” Ogunlana said. “About … three Sundays in the past, I used to be there and there was this particular person shot within the head. He’s useless now.”
“What blanks lodge in any individual’s mind and keep there and ship him to a coma, killing him?”
CNN has not been able to independently confirm the death of this person.
On Saturday, Brigadier Taiwo once again rejected any responsibility by the army for deaths of protesters, saying that one of the deaths was from “blunt pressure trauma to the pinnacle on Admiralty Way … three kilometers away from the Lekki toll gate. And the second particular person at Yaba.”
“It had nothing in any way to do with the Lekki toll gate,” he mentioned.
CNN stands by its investigation, an organization spokesperson mentioned.
“Our reporting was rigorously and meticulously researched, and we stand by it,” the spokesperson said via email.
In a letter addressed to CNN on November 23, Nigeria’s Ministry of Information demanded an internal investigation into CNN’s reporting, as a “kind of remediation” and to “decide whether or not it met the fundamental requirements of journalism.” The Minister added in the letter that the “Federal Government reserves the precise to take any motion inside its legal guidelines to forestall CNN from aggravating the #EndSARS disaster.”
Ogunlana, the lawyer representing some of the protesters, said the evidence the army continues to submit to the judicial panel is undermining its defense.
“There’s a proverb amongst my individuals,” Ogunlana said. “They say the wasp is in denial, the massive black ant identified for his horrible sting is in denial, however right here is the face of the farmer, so badly swollen.”
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