The incident of the shooting of protesters at the Lekki toll-gate area of Lagos State has continued to generate more controversies and reaction since its occurrence.
Lending his voice in defence of the deployed soldiers is a former Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Sani Usman, who says the troops acted professionally as they only used blank ammunition during the operation as against widespread belief that it was live rounds.
According to General Sani, “if you look at the canisters, they were blank ammo and blank ammo don’t even kill. At a close range, maybe 100 metres – maybe it will have some pigmentation on your skin.
Recall that the Lekki incident was met with widespread global condemnation as live videos from the scene were streamed via social media to further lend credibility to claims of a brutal attack by the soldiers. At least 12 persons were reportedly killed as confirmed by Amnesty International.
Nigerian Army had initially denied that its personnel were at the scene of the shooting as claimed, but later retracted this claim.
Sani Usman stated, “Remember the military are armed and by the nature of their training, they are trained to kill and I think the military in its wisdom instead of using live ammunition decided to use blank armour which is meant for training.
“I think they should be commended for that otherwise there would have been serious collateral damage, but they were professional enough to have done that.”