By James Rhodes
BBC News, Lagos
The Lekki toll gate has been rife with violence, as residents express their anger The Nigerian government has rejected a leaked report into a shooting at a toll gate on the Lagos-Victoria Island road last year as “fake news”. The report, by an independent team hired by the government, blamed the security agents who opened fire. But the executive secretary of the Lagos state government’s board for alternative and tarmacking projects, Henry Wale Adeniji, said it was just a conspiracy theory. Last year, around 20 people were shot dead when security agents opened fire at passengers on Lagos’ busiest toll road, the Lekki-Epe Expressway. It has been rife with violence since then. A Ghanaian-led “national task force” was set up to investigate. Allegations The leaked document by the National Resistance Movement, a coalition of non-governmental organisations fighting for justice, alleged that the security agents are corrupt and kill people for money. The Nigeria-based Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka wrote to President Muhammadu Buhari last year warning him about the violence. “The death toll due to lack of security on Lagos-Island express road, without any international agreements reached to secure its safety, has exceeded 50 since the beginning of 2017. “The continued close-range shooting on innocent citizens with faulty weaponry without being held accountable is an outright farce.” The rights groups say the Nigerian government has failed to carry out any investigation. In October, the federal government set up a special task force to try to tackle the violence. But the president and the parliament have since announced that the main ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC), wants to abolish the task force entirely.
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