Following its receipt of reports from judicial panels regarding EndSARS protests set up in 28 States across the country and in the FCT, the National Economic Council (NEC) has approved the payment of compensation to victims.
This, NEC said, should be done with each State, in collaboration with the Federal Government, establishing the modalities for the settlement of all monetary compensations awarded by the panels.
Members of the council also advised those planning protests to mark the anniversary of the #ENDSARS to reconsider the option in view of “current security situation across the country and the possibility of such protests being hijacked by armed hoodlums and other opportunistic criminals to cause mayhem at such protest events and venues.”
NEC also recommended that persons recruited into arms-bearing security agencies should undergo psychiatric evaluations and drug tests before enlistment and periodically after enlistment to ensure that the personnel are psychologically fit to carry live weapons and to identify behavioural tendencies that may require psycho-social interventions.
The next three days, October 20 to be precise, will be the first anniversary of the Lekki toll gate shooting, and culmination of the protests that broke out on October 3 last year.
The ugly incident, which marked a sudden turn of the once-peaceful #EndSARS protest, into a nationwide violence that led to the destruction of properties worth millions of Naira, remains a sore point in Nigeria’s recent history.
At the backdrop of reports of planned protests to mark its anniversary, however, the police have vowed to use every legitimate means to stop the proposed protest even as concerned citizens urge caution in handling the situation lest it degenerates into violence.
