There is anxiety in Lagos over the planned resumption of #EndSARS protest today by some youths amidst a threat by the police to resist any gathering.
The #EndSARS movement is said to be mobilizing to stage a fresh protest across the state citing “harassment” of the promoters.
The state panel of inquiry investigating alleged brutality and abuses by the disbanded State Anti-Robbery Squad as well as the recent Lekki shootings had suspended sitting on Saturday when two youth representatives pulled out in protest against the freezing of accounts of the #EndSARS promoters by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The youth, it was learnt, are already mobilizing ahead of today’s protest three weeks after the state recovered from massive arsons and destruction of public assets in the previous protests.
But the state police command has vowed to resist any fresh protest.
Daily Trust reports that the state command had deployed its men in strategic places in Lagos to foil any protest, at Alausa in Ikeja, parts of Awolowo Road, Ikeja Under-Bridge, Ikeja Along, among others.
The police command said it would resist any planned protest, procession or gathering under whatever guise in the metropolis, insisting that the government and residents were yet to overcome “the wounds sustained during the recent #EndSARS protests.”
The command’s spokesman, Muyiwa Adejobi, said intelligence gathered from relevant bodies indicated that “some unpatriotic elements or groups of people have concluded plans to orchestrate another set of violence in the state.”
He said a new group of protesters, under the guise of the recent #EndSARS, was planning to stage another protest when the previous ones had been adjudged “as violent, dangerous and counterproductive.”
“Premised on this, the command, therefore, wishes to warn any individual, group of students or any groups who might want to stage any form of protest, either “peaceful” or violent, or gathering whatsoever, to desist as the police and other security agencies will collectively and tactically resist any security threats or threats to public peace which might be triggered by protest or protesters in Lagos State,” Adejobi said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the national coordinator of the Youth Rights Campaign, Adaramoye Michael and the national secretary, Francis Nwapa, charged the police “to reassure the Nigerian people and youth that SARS and police brutality is truly a thing of the past by not behaving like the defunct SARS in flagrantly disregarding citizens’ constitutional rights.”
