The Presidency on Thursday rejected the reports of Amnesty International (AI) on the #EndSARS protests and the ensuing crisis, describing it as “misleading and inaccurate”.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, spoke on the Channels Television daily programme ‘Sunrise Daily’.
Adesina said the notion that the incident at the Lekki Toll Gate on Tuesday, October 20, 2020, fuelled the crisis was a misleading narrative.
He said the country had been witnessing the killing of policemen and civilians, the burning of police stations, as well as the looting and destruction of private and public property in various parts of the country before the Lekki incident.
He cited the jail breaks in Benin and Oko, the attacks on police stations and murder of police personnel in different places that happened before the alleged shooting at Lekki Toll Gate to buttress his point, saying AI’s report on the crisis was inaccurate, misplacing facts and wrong in most cases.
Adesina, while reacting to a question that the looting was a fallout of the alleged Lekki shootings, said: “You are not quite correct.
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“You are falling for the narrative of Amnesty International.
“And Amnesty is wrong. Anarchy had broken loose before even Lekki.
“The prisons in Benin and Oko had been broken open before Lekki.
“Orile police station had been burnt before Lekki.
“Many policemen had been burnt before Lekki.
“So, you cannot say it was Lekki that precipitated all those things.
Look at the timelines. You will discover that it had happened before Lekki.
“So, you are falling for the gambit of Amnesty International.
“Amnesty International does not have all the facts, they don’t run this country.
“They shouldn’t know beyond what they have been told.
“They shouldn’t know more than you and I should know as media people, as watchers of developments,” he said.
Asked if it was the President’s thinking that AI’s report was wrong, Adesina said AI had been known to always make unsubstantiated reports about Nigeria.
“Many times, the military has come out to dispute facts brought out by Amnesty,” he said.