- Police Tear-Gas Activists, Guber Candidates As #EndSARS Ghosts Return
- We Can’t Keep Remembering The Dead, Refuse To Confront Unanswered Questions-Atiku
- Obi: We Must Never Forget, Never Normalise Injustice
- Presidency Fires Back, Says ‘Tinubu Was Also A Victim’
Six years after the blood-stained night that shook Nigeria and turned the Lekki Toll Gate into a symbol of youth resistance, the ghosts of October 20, 2020, have returned to haunt the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), dragging the unresolved tragedy back to the centre of the nation’s political battlefield.
TheMatrix Newspaper reports that the anniversary of the #EndSARS protests has reopened old wounds, revived bitter questions about accountability and triggered a fresh war of words between opposition leaders and the Presidency, with former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar demanding to know who ordered the shooting of protesters, while Peter Obi insists that Nigeria must never forget the tragedy or normalise injustice.
Rather than allowing the anniversary to pass as a solemn moment of remembrance, the political confrontation has escalated, with the Presidency pushing back against Atiku’s accusations and defending President Bola Tinubu against attempts to link him to an incident that occurred when he was a private citizen.
And in a disturbing twist that has further darkened the anniversary, police fired tear gas on Tuesday at activists and concerned Nigerians who gathered at the Lekki Toll Gate to honour victims of the protests, forcing participants to flee and reigniting concerns about citizens’ right to peaceful assembly.
For the APC, which has governed Nigeria since 2015, the sixth anniversary has become more than a remembrance of a painful national episode. It has evolved into a fierce contest over responsibility, the credibility of government assurances on human rights and whether the country has done enough to answer the questions left behind by that night.
“Six years after the Lekki shooting, Nigeria is still waiting for a clear answer to one devastating question: Who gave the order?” Atiku asked in his anniversary message.
The question, which continues to echo across Nigeria’s political landscape, captures the central grievance that has refused to die: who authorised the deployment of lethal force against young Nigerians who had taken to the streets to demand an end to police brutality?
For families seeking answers, young people who witnessed the protests and Nigerians who watched the events unfold, the passage of six years has not erased the memory or settled the argument.
Instead, the anniversary has exposed the depth of the distrust that remains between citizens and the political establishment.
The Night Nigeria Will Not Forget
In October 2020, thousands of young Nigerians poured into the streets to protest against police brutality, extortion, unlawful arrests and alleged extrajudicial killings associated with the now-disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
What began as a demand to end police abuses quickly grew into a broader movement for accountability, institutional reform, better governance and a country in which young citizens would no longer have to fear those sworn to protect them.
Under the banner of #EndSARS, protesters occupied public spaces, organised demonstrations and used social media to amplify accounts of alleged police abuses. The movement drew nationwide attention and international solidarity, becoming one of the most consequential youth-led protest movements in Nigeria’s recent history.
The Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos emerged as one of the movement’s most recognisable rallying points. Night after night, demonstrators gathered there, many sitting peacefully, singing, praying and insisting that their demands could not be dismissed.
Then came October 20, 2020.
As the protests continued, soldiers opened fire on demonstrators at the Lekki Toll Gate. The shootings triggered national and international outrage, with reports of casualties, injuries and conflicting accounts of what happened. The precise circumstances, chain of command and full extent of the casualties became subjects of intense controversy.
The tragedy was compounded by disputes over casualty figures, the handling of evidence and the question of who should be held accountable.
A Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry subsequently found that protesters were shot at, injured and killed. The Lagos State Government rejected key aspects of the panel’s findings, including elements of its conclusions concerning casualties, leaving competing interpretations of the incident entrenched in public debate.
The protests eventually led to the disbandment of SARS, but the dissolution of the unit did not extinguish the demand for justice. Nor did it resolve the broader questions about the use of force, police accountability and the protection of citizens exercising their constitutional rights.
It is this unfinished business that continues to give October 20 its political force.
The anniversary is not merely about what happened in 2020. It is about what Nigerians believe has — or has not — happened since.
Atiku Turns The Heat On APC
Atiku’s anniversary intervention was a direct challenge to the ruling party, accusing it of failing to confront the questions that have lingered since the shootings.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate argued that the anger surrounding Lekki was not simply social media outrage, but the accumulated grief of families still demanding answers and young Nigerians who believed their calls for dignity had been met with violence.
“The APC has governed Nigeria through these six years. It cannot keep asking Nigerians to remember the dead while refusing to confront the unanswered questions,” he declared.
The former vice-president also recalled Tinubu’s controversial comments in the aftermath of the incident, arguing that the response appeared more concerned with questioning the protesters than demanding accountability for the violence.
But Atiku did not stop at the politics of remembrance. He connected the unresolved tragedy to the economic frustrations confronting young Nigerians, arguing that the promise of a better country remained unfulfilled for many.
With petrol prices, transportation, food and housing costs putting pressure on households, he contended that young Nigerians deserved both answers about Lekki and an economy that gave them a genuine chance to build their futures.
His intervention effectively turned the anniversary into a broader indictment of the APC’s record, linking the demand for accountability over the past to growing anxieties about Nigeria’s economic future ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Obi’s Warning: ‘We Must Never Normalise Injustice’
While Atiku concentrated on the question of responsibility and the APC’s record, Peter Obi struck a more solemn but equally pointed note, warning Nigerians against allowing the passage of time to erase the memory of the victims.
The presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) described the sixth anniversary as a painful reminder of the price young Nigerians paid in their quest for a better country.
“On that fateful night, peaceful #EndSARS protesters were met with gunfire. Lives were lost, many were injured, and the nation was left with questions about justice, accountability, and the sanctity of human life,” Obi said.
His most powerful message was also his simplest: “We must never forget. We must never normalise injustice.”
Obi called for a Nigeria where citizens are protected rather than brutalised, where young people are heard rather than silenced, and where public officials exercise power responsibly and respect human rights.
He insisted that no citizen should be punished for demanding good governance or seeking a better future.
The former Anambra State governor’s intervention placed the anniversary within a larger debate about the relationship between government and citizens, arguing that the true measure of democratic leadership lies in protecting lives, respecting rights and responding to legitimate grievances.
His message also carried an implicit warning to political leaders seeking the support of young Nigerians in 2027: the generation that mobilised under #EndSARS has not necessarily abandoned the questions that brought it to the streets.
Presidency Fires Back: ‘Tinubu Was Also A Victim’
But the Presidency has rejected the attempt to turn the Lekki shootings into a political indictment of Tinubu, with his Special Assistant on Social Media, Dada Olusegun, popularly known as Daddy D.O., accusing Atiku of exploiting the anniversary for political advantage.
In his response, Olusegun questioned why Atiku had not raised the issue during his visits to former President Muhammadu Buhari in Daura in June 2024 and in Kaduna in April 2025.
Buhari was president when the shootings occurred, Olusegun argued, insisting that Atiku had opportunities to seek answers from the former leader before directing his questions at Tinubu.
The presidential aide accused the former vice-president of political insincerity and suggested that his renewed interest in the incident was connected to his ambition to return to Aso Rock in 2027.
Olusegun also mounted a forceful defence of Tinubu’s position during the 2020 unrest, stressing that the President was a private citizen at the time and arguing that he, too, suffered consequences from the violence.
According to the aide, Tinubu’s residence on Bourdillon Road in Lagos was nearly razed during the unrest, forcing him and members of his domestic staff to flee for safety.
He further claimed that Tinubu endured harassment, insults and online abuse during the protests.
The Presidency’s defence therefore shifts attention from the unanswered questions surrounding the deployment of force at Lekki to the wider violence and destruction that accompanied the protests, including attacks on properties and the losses suffered by other Nigerians.
Olusegun also challenged the use of the expression “Lekki Massacre”, arguing that a massacre had not been conclusively established through legal proceedings and disputing casualty figures circulated in the aftermath.
The Federal Government had adopted a similar position in 2021. Then Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, criticised the Lagos judicial panel’s report, alleging inconsistencies and rejecting its conclusion that a massacre had occurred. The government maintained that the findings did not establish the case against the security agencies to the required standard.
The exchange has exposed two competing narratives: opposition leaders insist that the country still owes victims answers, while the Presidency argues that Tinubu is being unfairly blamed for an incident that occurred under Buhari’s administration and is being used as a political weapon.
Yet, even as the political actors trade accusations, the fundamental question remains: have the circumstances surrounding the Lekki shootings been satisfactorily explained to the Nigerian public?
Tear Gas On The Anniversary: A Painful Echo
Perhaps the most troubling development of the sixth anniversary was the confrontation at the very location that became synonymous with the protests.
On Tuesday, police fired tear gas to disperse activists and concerned Nigerians gathered at the Lekki Toll Gate to honour those affected by the 2020 demonstrations.
Among those present were Funso Doherty, the Lagos governorship candidate of the NDC, and Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the ADC. The gathering was disrupted as participants fled the tear gas, while activists vowed to continue demanding justice and police reforms.
The symbolism was difficult to ignore.
Six years after young Nigerians occupied the toll gate to protest police brutality, a commemoration intended to honour their struggle was itself interrupted by security operatives.
For those who see the anniversary as a test of the country’s democratic maturity, the incident raises fresh questions about the right to peaceful assembly and whether authorities have fully absorbed the lessons of 2020.
The anniversary has also arrived as political parties prepare for the 2027 elections, making the memory of #EndSARS an increasingly potent issue in the contest for the support of young voters.
