On Tuesday morning, 20 October, police tear-gassed residents, journalists and two Lagos governorship candidates at the Lekki tollgate during a memorial for the victims of the 2020 #EndSARS protests, TheCable reported. Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the ADC and Funso Doherty of the NDC were among those caught in the fumes. The procession, organised by Enough is Enough (EiE), marked six years since the shooting.
According to TheCable, officers were already at the tollgate before the memorial started and broke it up with tear gas canisters. Some people were injured. Others struggled to breathe as traffic built up on the expressway. One of the wreaths was for Pelumi Onifade, the journalist shot dead in Lagos during the protests.
The Lagos judicial panel of inquiry confirmed nine people dead at Lekki on 20 October 2020 and listed four more as missing, presumed dead. Six years on, a wreath for them is still treated as a threat.
It isn’t only Lekki
Separately, the Nigerian Bar Association’s Enugu branch and Spaces for Change warned that courts are being used to shrink civic space. Their report, presented in Enugu and covered by The PUNCH, counts cases of “judicially enabled repression” in West Africa jumping from nine between 2017 and 2022 to 70 between 2022 and 2024. It says Nigerian courts accepted treason charges against minors arrested at the August 2024 protests.
In Osun, the family of Taofiki Mustapha wants answers. Police say he was accused of stealing cocoa pods on 5 October, beaten and paraded half-naked, handed to the Agbeye Police Post, and found dead in the cell the next morning. The family’s lawyers say it was 13 pods, and that nobody has established he took them. Postmortem results are still pending, per The PUNCH.
What’s still owed
TheCable’s report carries no police explanation for Tuesday’s dispersal. Lagos police owe one. The Osun command owes the Mustapha family a postmortem result. With 2027 governorship candidates now coughing on the same tarmac, the question for everyone asking for Lagos votes is a simple one. What will you do about Lekki?
Sources TheCable (Lekki memorial, 20 Oct 2026); The PUNCH (NBA and Spaces for Change, Oct 2026); The PUNCH (Osun police cell death, Oct 2026).
