Lekki Toll Gate became the epicentre of #EndSARS protest-related violence, but it was not the only place in Lagos State that was characterized by chaos and casualties. This is an investigation into similar events in Ajegunle.

ON Tuesday, October 20, 2020, Happiness Abraka, 19, woke up to a bright new day. But by dawn, he was in darkness.

Abraka is an apprentice in blacksmithing, a craft he started learning three years ago upon graduating from secondary school. Given that he was average academically, he set his sights on excelling as a craftsman, and he gave the venture all his dedication.

He planned to start his own blacksmith´s shop once he gained freedom from his master, but that ambition now seems unattainable, given his current handicapped state.

Abraka was one of the various victims of brutalities believed to have been committed by both state security apparati and sponsored political thugs during nationwide #EndSARS protests.

On that fateful Tuesday, Abraka left the single room apartment he shared with his mother and two other siblings in Ajegunle, one of Lagos State’s largest slums, to see what was happening on the protest ground a few streets away from his home.

His boss at the blacksmith’s shop had given him a day off work, presenting him an opportunity to join thousands of Nigerian youth who had poured unto the streets to demand an end to police brutality, extortion and extrajudicial killing by officials of the now-dissolved Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).

It was Abraka’s first time joining the protest, which had gained global attention after it started about two weeks earlier.

“I decided to go and see what was happening,” Abraka says, but he did not leave the protest ground with his sight. Instead, he left with a metallic ball forcing a pathway through his temple.

¨I don’t know what to do anymore,¨ he says despairingly.

Abraka recalled standing by a corner, away from the protesters but close enough to watch, as they chanted songs, danced, waved placards and the Nigerian flags.

Suddenly, a loud bang clouded the atmosphere with Chloroacetophenone, commonly known as tear gas, followed by sporadic shootings.

In that instance, Abraka’s vision went pitch black.

“I fell to the ground,” he remembers. ¨I then heard a voice telling me to move.¨

Abraka was guided into an uncompleted building. There, he recalled, he was given alcohol to drink.

¨[I realized] I could not see anymore,¨ he reveals.

A bullet had pierced his head from the side, ripping through both of his eyes.

A hospital report confirms he is now completely blind.

Another DJ saved the day

One of the Lekki Toll Gate debacle heroes is Onianuju Catherine Udeh, popularly known as DJ Switch. She streamed the attack at the scene and was one of the first people to accuse the Nigerian Army of the extrajudicial killing of harmless civilians.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/kaka-merchant-of-massacre/