Lagos relaxes curfew, now 8am to 6pm

THE Lagos State government has relaxed the 24-hour state-wide curfew it imposed on Tuesday, October 21.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said the 24-hour curfew would now be from 8am to 6pm starting from Saturday, October 24.

The sudden imposition of the curfew on Tuesday has been blamed for the bloody incident at the Lekki Toll-Gate base of the #EndSARS movement, when some men in military uniform opened fire on the protesters who were armed with only Nigerian flags and singing the national anthem.

Speaking to reporters after his tour of the ruins of public and private properties that were destroyed by rioters who went on rampage on Wednesday and Thursday, the governor said
the new curfew timeline was necessary to enable normal life resumed in the city, which has been on high tension since the Tuesday shootings at Lekki.

The men in military uniforms had been reported to have opened fire on the #EndSRS protesters on the premise that they had defied the 4pm deadline.

Though the deadline for the curfew announced at about noon on Tuesday had been extended to 9pm by the governor, the shooters suspected to be men of the Nigerian army, had invaded the camp of the protesters at about 7pm and rained bullet into the crowd.

There had been confusing figures of number of casualties reported in the media, but the governor in a broadcast on Wednesday claimed that no life had been reported lost in the mayhem.

The Nigerian army too described the shooting as “Fake News”, which, however, run contrary to viral videos and accounts of those who were at the scene of the incident, including television crews.