Lagos EndSARS Report: Lawyer Slams Lai Mohammed, Terms Him A Bully

Lawyer to the #EndSARS campaigners who participated in the Okwuobi panel, Adesina Ogunlana, has accused Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information and Culture, of bullying the Lagos State Government.

 

Ogunlana who was reacting to Mr Mohammed’s take on the #EndSARS report, said a lot of things were wrong with the minister’s position.

 

Ogunlana said, “What Lai Mohammed has done, politically if you are conscious, is bullying Lagos State”.

 

The minister in his reaction to the leaked #EndSARS report said the panel’s proceedings was a waste of time, and a misuse of the taxpayers’ money, a statement which has not gone down well with many Nigerians.

 

Responding to Mr Mohammed, Ogunlana who on Wednesday was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, said it is sad that the report should be greeted with such repugnance.

 

He feared that there was a possibility for the Federal Government to bully the Lagos white paper panel.

 

According to him, “Before the verdict came out, the position was that we are waiting for the panel, we are waiting for the verdict, now the verdict has come out, it’s now getting difficult for some people to accept the fact.

 

“Many of these people were either members or supporters of what we call the ruling party. Instead of just being decent, they are trying to look for flaw trying to save themselves.

 

“One ordinarily ought not to be so highly celebratory of this report assuming it is a normal country, a normal system; if things have been going on normally, then it should just have been the norm that when a panel duly constituted and filled with competent people, do their work, they are expected to come out with the truth.

 

“The Federal Government did not set up the panel, the panel did not submit the report to the federal government, and here you see a minister of the federal government dismissing the panel, tearing the report apart and already selling an agenda for Lagos State”, he stated.

While affirming that the leaked report was indeed official, Mr Ogunlana stated that it has only come as a shock because the antecedent in Nigeria is that government instituted panels do not come out with the truth.

 

He added that, “Government in Nigeria must have been badly hit because you are being indicted by the panel you setup yourself”.

 

He resolved that Lai Mohammed like other politicians in Nigeria do not accept verdicts of panels, once it does not favour them.

 

The counsel to the EndSARS Campaigners in the Okwuobi-led panel stressed that from a radical perspective, “bourgeois law is not meant for the upliftment of the masses”.

 

On this premise, he noted that his position and that of his clients is that justice must be done, and those found guilty must be held accountable.