Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has told #EndSARS sympathisers to “snap out” of the Lekki tollgate massacre in Lagos.

He stated that the citizens should learn from the experience and become resilient. 

“When you say who gave the shooting and all of that, we need to be able to snap out of it, and let’s build back better, and understand that the lessons and the learning of that incident have made us better, more resilient citizens,” Mr Sanwo-Olu said on Naija Info. 

The governor said he was not responsible for the military engagement on October 20 at the tollgate. 

He added that those who aim to become the state’s governor should stop using divisive words. 

“At the end of the day, what happened on October 20? It happened, right? I did not create events or the military engagement there,” Mr Sanwo-Olu said. 

The Lagos governor added, “So, the question around, which I find very strange, is when people that are meant to become governor of Lagos state are using words that are dividing us, as against things that should be uniting us.”

He mentioned that the victims involved in the Lekki tollgate state-sanctioned violence had been compensated.

“I have mentioned that everybody that has come out, in any form, to say that they have been injured. I have paid them. Compensations have been given to all of the injured people that have come out,” Mr Sanwo-Olu stressed.

Last December, human rights activist Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa accused Mr Sanwo-Olu of shielding officers of the Nigerian Army that opened fire on unarmed protesters during the #EndSARS protest at the Lekki tollgate.

A month before Mr Adegboruwa’s claim, a group of lawyers who defended #EndSARS protesters in Lagos under the aegis of the New Nigeria Network and the Radical Agenda Movement in the Nigerian Bar Association (RAMINBA) had demanded President Muhammadu Buhari and Mr Sanwo-Olu’s resignation.