Inspector-General of Police, Muhammed Adamu, on Tuesday, visited Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, at the State House in Marina, lamenting the colossal damage done by hoodlums who hijacked the #EndSARS protests against police brutality last month.
Adamu, who briefed reporters, said he was in the state for an assessment of the police assets vandalised after the protest and to commiserate with residents.
Six police officers were reportedly lynched in Lagos, 36 critically injured, while 46 police stations were torched.
In a statement titled, ‘Sanwo-Olu Receives Police IG Over Coordinated Arson In Lagos’, the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Gboyega Akosile, said his principal commiserated with the police chief over the mob attacks on police personnel and torching of their stations.
“Sanwo-Olu intimated the IGP on the move by the state government to rebuild the razed police stations and offer scholarship awards to the children of the officers killed in the violence,” the statement partly read.
Akosile also quoted the police chief as saying, “Lagos was the epicentre where the EndSARS protest took place and the number of destruction in the subsequent violence was more in Lagos than any other part. I came to commiserate with the Governor and people of the state. The destruction they suffered was uncalled for.
“The second leg of my visit is to see the police stations destroyed and boost the morale of our men in Lagos. We don’t want them to be demoralised by the event in which they suffered personal attacks. Policemen are trained to take such pain. Now that the event has happened, it shouldn’t discourage us from performing our constitutional duties.”
Adamu said the scale of the destruction witnessed in Lagos and around the country called for the need by Nigerians to adopt standard protocols for public protests whenever they wanted to express their grievances against the system.
“It is very important to set up protocols that will prevent hoodlums to hijack peaceful protest organised with good intentions. The moment the protest organisers don’t have leadership, the purpose and intent of the effort would be defeated. As we have seen in the case of EndSARS protest, no economy will be able to bear the loss that we have seen in Lagos,” the IGP was further quoted.
