Highlights of yesterday’s #EndSARS protests 

21 Oct Highlights of yesterday’s #EndSARS protests 

Activists and youths yesterday defied the ban on protests to hit the streets in many state capitals to mark the one-year anniversary of the #EndSARS protests.

*  In Lagos, what started as a car precession by the activists soon became rowdy and more people poured into the Lekki Toll gate. At a point the Police resorted to the use tear gas to disperse the crowd. Four suspected hoodlums

were arrested.

* In the Federal Capita Territory (FCT), Abuja, youths gathered at the Unity Fountain and marched across some of the major streets in the nation’s capital. From the Unity Fountain, the youths marched towards the National Assembly, but they were intercepted by a team of security operatives.

*In Edo State, youths gathered around the national museum in Benin City, the Edo State capital, in commemoration of the one year anniversary of the #EndSARS protest. The protesters demanded that the recommendations of the Edo Judicial Panel of Inquiry on police brutality and related issues be implemented.

* In Osun, protesters under the umbrella body of Osun Civil Society Movement, organised a public lecture, while others marched through the streets in Osogbo.

*In Akure, scores of youth from across Ondo State held a memorial procession to mark one year anniversary of the event. The protesters reminded the Inspector General of Police that his “boys” were back in the streets, alleging that the officers are not after armed robbers, bandits, kidnappers but they are after Nigerian youth.

* Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, yesterday, inaugurated a Committee for the Protection of Human Rights in the state with an appeal for more citizen participation in peace and nation building.

* In Rivers State, over 200 youths staged a candlelight procession at the popular Waterline junction in Port Harcourt. The youths, who were peaceful during the procession, alleged that one year after, no action had been taken to penalise police officers indicted in the report by the #EndSARS panel.

*Addressing a press conference in Abuja, Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed, spoke on measures that had been taken to improve the efficiency of the police and other security agencies’ architecture, and  accused those he labelled “champions of a massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate,” including Amnesty International and CNN, of holding on to “their unproven stand.”