'They pointed their guns at us and started shooting' - How a bloody night of bullets and brutality quashed a young protest movement

By Dilip -

Sometime after midnight on October 21, Elisha Sunday Ibanga answered a phone call from his older brother's number. The person on the other end of the line -- a stranger -- broke the news that Ibanga's brother, Victor, had been shot dead at the Lekki toll gate, in Lagos, Nigeria, where he had been peacefully protesting against police brutality earlier that night. "The person told me that the police took his body away," Ibanga, 24, told CNN. An eyewitness to Victor Sunday Ibanga's death told CNN the 27-year-old entrepreneur was shot in the head during the protest.

CNN has obtained and geolocated a photograph of Victor's body lying in a pool of blood and wrapped in the white and green of the Nigerian standard -- one of the same flags gripped by fellow protesters earlier in the evening as they sang the country's national anthem. Ibanga confirmed the photograph is of his brother. The Ibangas are one of several families yet to locate the bodies of their missing loved ones -- protestors at the toll gate -- who dozens of eyewitnesses say were shot at, first by members of the Nigerian army and then hours later by police. Eyewitnesses told CNN they saw the army remove a number of bodies from the scene.

What happened on October 20, and into the early hours of October 21, at the eight-lane Lekki toll gate -- a key piece of Lagos' road network -- has stunned the country. The protesters who were present have told CNN it was a "massacre" with multiple people killed and dozens wounded. But local authorities have downplayed that account….

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/18/africa/lagos-nigeria-lekki-toll-gate-feature-intl/index.html

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