A Nigerian filmmaker, Ideh Chukwuma, aka, Onesoul, on Sunday said he did not see any dead body at Lekki toll gate where security operatives opened fire at unarmed #EndSARS protesters last Tuesday.
The actual number of casualties from the incident has been mirred in controversy over as the debate on the number of people killed rages.
The morning after the shooting, Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, in a broadcast to Lagosians said nobody died at the scene of the incident, a claim that was countered by Femi Gbajabiamila, the speaker of the house of representative later that day.
The governor later in the day in an update reported that one of the injured proteters had died from a head wound in a private hospital in Lagos.
DJ Switch one of the visible faces of the protests at the Lekki Tollgate on Friday claimed that she counted at least 15 persons killed by soldiers on the night of the shooting.
However, in an interview with PT, Onesoul expressed reservation about the use of “massacre” to describe what happened at the protest ground.
According to the filmmaker, though soldiers indeed shot at protesters and many were injured in the process, he did not see any dead body when he visited the protest ground.
He told the publication, “What I will say is, I have been hearing people say “Lekki massacre, Lekki massacre.” I have to be honest with you if you Google the term “massacre,” massacre is a situation where a group of people were being killed by rebels or the military and going by that particular point, I would have been able to tell you that I saw a lot of dead bodies, this is how they killed them, there were a lot of dead bodies and so it was a massacre.”
“But from the time I came, I didn’t see any dead bodies but I can certainly tell you that there was a shooting, an unauthorised shooting. I will call it a raid, I will call it assault. I am going to term it assault and raid. That is what I would use.
“It was an assault and I and I may be wrong but because I didn’t see those bodies, and I have not seen a family member that has come to cry and say one two or three persons have died.”
Onesoul, however, said the account by DJ Switch could be true, explaining that he was not present at the protest ground when the soldiers started the shooting.
“If DJ Switch had seen that, she’s in the best position to say that because she was there. I cannot say she’s wrong. I was out of that circle. I was a few meters away,” he added.
“They were at the toll gate and I was a few meters away from them. I wasn’t there, I was at Lekki Phase 1. I can’t tell you what the military’s approach on their arrival was. So, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that they shot one, two, three, four, or five people. But I can certainly tell you that I took a lot of gunshot victims to the hospital.
“If I took about 13 people to the hospital myself, minus the ones that the governor confirmed that were injured, he said about thirty, that is forty-something, DJ Switch might not be wrong. I took 13 to the hospital.
“So, if DJ Switch said she saw 15 dead people, by her own records, because she was there so she can speak on that part. I can’t speak on that and none of the thirteen people that I took to the hospital has died. They are still alive and some of them have been discharged.”
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