Last week, police officers surrounded Onomene Adene, whose brother was organising fresh protests. Growing numbers of arrests against protesters in recent weeks have also caused alarm.

Last week, Nigeria’s attorney general, Abubakar Malami, told journalists that “hoodlums in army uniform” could have been behind the shootings. Nigeria’s army, which initially denied they were present, have claimed they only shot blank rounds, despite dozens of protesters treated for gunshot wounds in nearby hospitals. Several witnesses have said they saw soldiers carting dead bodies away from the scene. Since the killings, government officials have both vowed to investigate them and discredited any accounts that abuses had taken place. At least 12 people died at Lekki and at another shooting elsewhere in the city by security forces, according to Amnesty International.Įmoruwa said: “From the threats to journalists and media organisations, and the various attempts to pass a social media gag legislation there is a valid concern about the state of democracy in Nigeria.” Nigeria’s army and government officials have since said footage from the scene was manipulated, and Buhari’s government have vowed to regulate social media in the wake of the shootings. In late October, Nigeria’s media regulator, the national broadcasting commission, fined three of the country’s prominent news agencies for broadcasting social media footage of the shootings in Lekki by soldiers that drew condemnation around the world. The idea is to create a media blackout in a bid to cover up the various atrocities committed by the state against the peaceful protesters,” he said. But then the government restricted Gatefield’s account through a back-channel instruction to Access Bank. “We were providing financial and technical support to independent journalists and media organisations to report on police brutality and to document the protests. Lawyers for Nigeria’s Central Bank argued in court this week that the account-holders were involved in “suspected terrorism financing”.Īmong the accounts suspended was Gatefield, a public policy organisation that had offered financial assistance to journalists covering the demonstrations, its founder, Adewunmi Emoruwa, said. Those targeted had been raising or received money in support of protests that had erupted across Nigeria last month, providing medical and legal aid for injured and arrested demonstrators, grants for journalists to cover police and army abuses at the protests, and help to families of those killed during the demonstrations.

On 4 November, the Central Bank of Nigeria obtained a court order authorising it to block the accounts for 90 days. Twenty individuals and entities, judged as prominent supporters of “end Sars” protests against the since-disbanded, infamously brutal special anti-robbery squad, have had their accounts suspended by Nigerian banks, preventing them from receiving funds. Nigerian authorities appear to have used coercive financial measures to suppress protests against police brutality and independent media reporting, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Friday.

Protesters and resolutioners