A security consultant and retired military intelligence officer, Col. Ola Majoyeogbe, has dismissed the claims of some witnesses, who told the Cable News Network (CNN) that they were shot at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on October 20.
Col Majoyeogbe, who said he did not have all the facts and pieces of evidence before the members of the Lagos State Judicial Panel on Police Brutality explained the claims in the video, in his opinion, were scandalous and biased.
The retired Colonel dismissed the claim that 78 protesters were killed.
He said: “As a retired military man, I was not comfortable with the figure earlier brought out because a combat that caused the death of 78 lives would not have been quelling a protest.
“In the CNN video, a man claimed to have been shot and the bullet entered through a part of his body and came through another part. If he was indeed shot that way, he would not be alive to tell the story.
“The video is biased and it shows that those sent to do the story had made up their minds before going,” he said.
According to him, those who claimed that many people were killed are yet to bring the bodies or mention where they are kept.
Majoyeogbe noted that in all the videos going viral on the internet, military men were seen firing into the air, adding that while he was not disputing any loss of lives, he was yet to see the angle where people were indiscriminately shot at close range.
The CNN claims that testimony from dozens of eyewitnesses and family members interviewed and a forensic examination of hours of video and dozens of photographs captured before, during and after the two shooting incidents show how a fledgling protest movement was all but extinguished by the very thing Nigerians were demonstrating against.
