Lekki shooting: Lawmaker wants Buhari, Lai Mohammed, others banned from UK
United Kingdom lawmakers have called on their government to impose sanctions on Nigerian officials over the alleged killing of protesters at the Lekki Toll Plaza on October 20.
The call came as the parliament debated the alleged killings following a citizen petition to do so.
One of the parliamentarians, Kate Osamor, urged the UK government to stop funding corrupt Nigerian agencies.
Osamor, who has served as the chair for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Nigeria since 2015, said the government should instead focus on poverty alleviation programmes.
Osamor also accused the UK government of not taking the alleged killing of EndSARS protesters seriously. She noted that the UK government gave Nigeria £10 million to fund the now-dismantled Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
The UK, according to reports, trained SARS personnel for four years through the CSSF-funded Nigeria Policing Programme, which ended in March 2020.
“Today, we need to consider how the government responds to both the movement itself and the violent actions of the Nigerian regime,” Osamor said.
“We must also take this opportunity to look beyond sanctions into how development funding is spent in Nigeria.
“Instead of funding corrupt security agencies and investing in projects which do not benefit ordinary Nigerians, we need a new focus on poverty relief and anti-corruption programmes.
“At the very moment in which Amnesty International had declared SARS units to have been involved in extra-judicial killings, corruption and torture, the government was using the budget to train and equip those units,” she said.
Osamor also blasted information and culture minister Lai Mohammed for calling the alleged killing of protesters a hoax. She said Mohammed’s rejection of a CNN report into the alleged killing was “undemocratic”.
She urged the UK government to ban Nigerian officials, including President Muhammadu Buhari, from enjoying good governance in the UK as long as they fail to deliver similar dividends in their own country.
