Human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), has described as the best ever produced, the report of the Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters.
He stated this on Thursday during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, three days after the panel said nine EndSARS protesters were killed at the Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020.
After a leaked version of the report indicting the Nigerian Army and Police was circulated on social media, Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, set up a committee to review the panel’s report, which is yet to be released officially.
“The panel gave everybody fair hearing, bent over backward to accommodate those who should have been sent packing, did a thorough analysis of the evidence and arrived at recommendations that tallied with the findings.
“It was a thorough-going exercise, one of the best reports ever produced by a judicial commission of inquiry in Nigeria,” Falana said.
A cross-section of EndSARS protesters
The senior lawyer, however, faulted the leakage of the report of the Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters.
He said Lagos State government should only release the report after its four-member set up to raise a White Paper on the reports submitted by the Judicial Panel of Inquiry has completed its assignment.
Falana added: “A judicial commission of inquiry was set up, it has concluded its assignment and submitted the report to the government, including the recommendations. The government will have to study the report and recommendations and issue a white paper which should contain the directives of the government on each of the findings.
“So the government could not have released the report and the government should not have released the report because it has to. A committee has been set up now and that committee should have been allowed to carry out its assignment.
“It is after that committee has concluded its own assignment that the government will then release the report via a white paper.”