The Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of Special Anti-Robbery Squad Related Abuses on other matters, popularly known as EndSARS Panel, has provided contradicting submissions on forensic testimony by the Lagos State Chief Pathologist, Prof, John Oladapo Obafunwa, in its report.
The 309 page report was submitted to the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, last week Monday by the panel.
According to the report, which has been circulating in the public domain since its submission, Obafunwa was quoted on page 288 of the 309-page work to have stated: “Deaths of three cases came about at Lekki but the identities of the dead were unknown.”
The report further clarified that Obafunwa, an Anatomy and Forensic Pathologist from the Department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, Lagos, was specific in identifying where the corpses were said to have been recovered, where they were said to have been preserved, and when autopsies were conducted.
The report concluded that the cause of death of one of the three was bleeding due to a blunt force trauma.
Though he did not comment on the blunt force trauma of two of the three corpses, Obafunwa, however, affirmed that the third case was caused by gunshots injuries, specifically a rifle weapon.
Despite his submission as clearly stated in the report, the panel still went ahead on page 288 to posit that Obafunwa’s testimony “revealed death from bleeding caused by penetrating objects or rifled weapon”.
Thorough scrutiny of the entire document to cross-reference the submission that may have informed the panel’s above conclusion did not turn up anything of sort.
In its attempt to justify that most of the corpses came from Lekki Tollgate, the EndSARS Panel stated: “The fact of lack of identity of some of the other 96 corpses on the list supplied by Professor Obafunwa would not obliterate the fact that some of them could have come from the Lekki Toll Gate Incident of October 20, 2020 or that some other unidentified corpses may have been removed by their families or the military, as claimed by the EndSARS protesters, far and beyond the list tendered by Professor Obafunwa.”
PRNigeria reported how a testimony by Dr. Babajide Lawson, a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon at Reddington Hospital, Lagos, on the Lekki incidence was found to be altered in a re-presentation by the panel: https://prnigeria.com/2021/11/
PRNigeria.
