#EndSARS: Pathologist says 3 out of 99 bodies brought to Lagos morgue are from Lekki toll gate

Chief Pathologist of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), John Obafunwa has told the state Judicial Panel of Inquiry that 99 bodies were deposited at Lagos morgue during the October 2020 #EndSARS crisis in the state.

The victims according to Obafunwa include three that were killed at Lekki tollgate where Nigerian soldiers opened fire on peaceful protesters on Tuesday, October 20, 2021.

He said the bodies were deposited at the morgues between October 19 and 24.

The former Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University added that autopsies were done on the 99 bodies, but did not disclose the details of the autopsies.

Obafunwa made this known on Saturday, June 5, 2021, while giving evidence to assist the state's judicial panel in its investigation of the October 20, 2020, Lekki tollgate shooting incident.

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The professor of Medicine said only three corpses were recorded to have been from Lekki, and 96 other bodies from different parts of the state.

He presented the pictures of three bodies recovered from Lekki, saying “Those are the three bodies I was told were from Lekki as recorded by the people who brought them in.”

However, Olumide Fusika, a counsel to some #EndSARS protesters disagreed with Obafunwa saying the professor’s claim is not true.

Fusika said, “I want to prove to this panel that the claim that only three dead bodies were brought in from Lekki is not true.”

The lawyer urged the panel to order Obafunwa to present the records of all 99 cases recorded during the crisis.

“Since he was told that only those three are from Lekki, he might have been told the wrong thing,” Fusika said.

Reacting, Obafunwa explained that the bodies were deposited by the Lagos State Environmental Health Monitoring Unit (SEHMU), an agency in charge of recovering dead bodies.

“I don’t go about scavenging for dead bodies. It is when they are brought in that we are told and it is recorded where they were taken from,” the pathologist said.

He maintained that only three bodies were recovered from Lekki, while 96 were brought to the morgue from different parts of the state including Ikorodu, Lagos Mainland, Yaba and Mushin.