Lekki toll gate: FG, Lagos, police talk tough as organisers vow protests will hold

The Federal Government and the police on Thursday gave strong warnings to youths, who planned to protest at Lekki toll gate, Lagos on Saturday.

But the young Nigerians, under the aegis of #EndSARS Season 2, vowed to defy government’s order banning the protest.

One of them, Kunle Ajayi, in an interview with The PUNCH, said nothing would stop the demonstration from holding.

The Federal Government and the police on Thursday gave strong warnings to youths, who planned to protest at Lekki toll gate, Lagos on Saturday.

But the young Nigerians, under the aegis of #EndSARS Season 2, vowed to defy government’s order banning the protest.

One of them, Kunle Ajayi, in an interview with The PUNCH, said nothing would stop the demonstration from holding.The following day, the protest spread to other cities including Abuja, Benin, Abeokuta and Port Harcourt.

The matter came to a head on October 20, 2020, when heavily armed soldiers shot protesters at Lekki toll gate killing many people.

On Thursday, the youth said they would go ahead with their plan to stage a protest on Saturday against the reopening of the Lekki toll gate.One of the youth, Ajayi, told The PUNCH that the protest would hold, assuring Nigerians that it would be peaceful.

He said, “Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. We are not just calling for the protest, we are ensuring that it does not go haywire. The protest is like rain that cannot be controlled. We want a constitutional peaceful protest; the working people have agreed to make it peaceful, except the state wants to make it otherwise as they have always been doing.The working people will be out. We have passed through this stage before. During the #EndSARS protest, before October 20, they started killing people. The more they killed, the more the people came out. They started from Ogbomosho, went to Delta and deployed thugs in Abuja. The more the violence, the more the people will come out because they feel you cannot enslave them in their own country. It’s about the working people of Nigeria represented by the new youth, who do not even see a future, let alone having one.”

Also, organisers of the protest, in a statement on Thursday, accused the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, of seeking to cover up the alleged killing of scores of protesters at the toll gate on October 20, 2020.

The youth, in the statement, titled, ‘EndSARS Season 2: Why we will #OccupyLekkiTollGate on Saturday’, said they remained undaunted despite the threats from security agents and the state government.

We won’t allow Lekki toll gate reopening, it’s blood money –OrganisersThey also highlighted reasons for the renewed protest.

The statement said, “After committing genocide by killing scores of people who were peacefully protesting at Lekki toll gate and other parts of Lagos, Governor Sanwo-Olu and other oppressors want to spit on the dead and dance on the blood of the innocent by reopening the gate to be collecting their blood money again.