The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) denounced the continued brutality of protestors who came out to commemorate the ENDSARS rally on Wednesday.
In significant cities across the country, the one-year anniversary was marked with a candlelight march and a protest.
Nigerians disobeyed police warnings and organized peaceful protests at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, which was the epicenter of alleged military attacks that resulted in the deaths of scores of protestors.
Nigerian security forces greeted the nonviolent demonstrators, with several of them being brutalized and dragged into police vans, while others had their smart phones confiscated and shattered.
The PDP criticized the police action in a statement issued on Wednesday by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, calling it a hallmark of a failing government.
“The party vehemently condemns the sustained brutalization of Nigerians by APC-controlled security forces, particularly the bloody assault on innocent youths at Wednesday’s EndSARS remembrance procession, in various parts of the country,” the statement read in part.
The PDP notes that “EndSARS has come to stay as an epitaph of the manifest cruelty, wicked brutality, torture, illegal detention, mindless extra-judicial killings, gagging and suppression of citizens that were the hallmark of the APC and its administration in the last six years.”
EndSARS, he added, has become a symbol of Nigerians’ opposition to the callous, incompetent, corrupt, divided, and decadent APC regime, which has caused so much sorrow and pain to Nigerians.
“It is shocking that, despite the promises to stop brutality and restore good governance, Nigerians who came out to march in remembrance of the victims of last year’s brutality were made to face the same trauma, if not worse brutality in the hands of security operatives.”
The statement added that, “the PDP weeps at the cruelty inflicted on the Lagos Uber driver and many other youths by APC-controlled security agents as well as non-state actors, hired to repress Nigerians who were out exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
“The PDP demands that the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, immediately arrest and commence the trial of all security operatives involved in the heinous act against Nigerians.”
The party bemoaned the fact that most of the issues that prompted the EndSARS protest in 2020, such as bad governance and citizen brutality, are still unaddressed, and urged the Federal Government to speed up efforts to rectify them and deliver justice to the people.
However, the government, through Mr Lai Mohammed of the Ministry of Information, denied that any killings occurred a year ago.
Mr Mohammed dismissed the purported assassination as a ghost, claiming that there was no evidence to support his claim.
