All is set to make financial amends as proposed by the government panel for those who lost lives and property in the #EndSARS protests which rocked the country a year ago.
The state government through the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Sir Charles Titiloye , said it would soon complete work on the recommendations made by the panel that looked into the petitions of victims.
Properties worth billions of Naira were destroyed by hooďlums in major cities across the south west states and Abuja, and many lives also lost to the nationwide protests calling for an end to police brutality.
In Ondo state, the Panel of Enquiry set up by the state Governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu submitted its report on Wednesday, April 27, 2021.
The panel which received 77 petitions was said to have recommended the payment of about N755 million to various petitioners who suffered damage during the violent protests .
The Commissioner said he could not give the actual date when compensations would be paid to the victims.
However, in his assessment, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria and immediate past Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in the state, Adekola Olawoye regretted that the fundamentals behind the last protests have not been addressed.
Olawoye who explained that, one year after the national protest nothing has practically changed, called on the Federal and State governments to expedite actions and address various serious challenges confronting youths in the nation.
He decried the situation whereby youths are described as leaders of tomorrow but in actual fact, they lack the opportunity to develop for leadership position.
“The elders now are still warming up for 2023, how? You can be sure that anybody below 35 or 40 years will not be given a chance. Where is the future? Where is the place of the youth? The future is bleak.
“Years in, years out we roll out from our tertiary institutions, thousands of youths who are armed with various degrees and yet after graduation they return to their various homes.
“So, my own advice now is that in this one year anniversary we must have a rethink. Is it worth it again going on the streets and being killed in thousands by these callous security men we have in this country.
Also, a retired Police Commissioner, Chief Samuel Adetunji said, “Nigerians, government, the police everybody have not learnt any lesson.
“Nothing has changed. Some of the alleged brutalities are still there. People are still complaining, the police are still working without adequate facilities at least from what we see. We are still using outdated strategy of stop and search and for the police to investigate cases. We are only looking at the effects and not the causes of the protest.
“Our leaders travel abroad, do they see policemen standing on the road stopping people in this manner? We see what is happening to people on the roads. We also see what is happening to people in some police stations but these things will continue to happen as long as we continue the same way to do things. The expectation of the agitators have not been met because these things are still happening. They are happening because we have not taken care of causes of the problem.”
He advised government to take decisions that would help change the situation positively, adding that government should look beyond the effects of the protests as it was also important to carefully scrutinize the issues that led to the agitation and work on how to tackle the causes.
“If we cannot tackle the problem alone, we have friendly countries that we can seek their assistance. We can seek the assistance of countries like Israel, France, Germany, USA, UK and others. It is not like people in those countries are not crime disposed, it is just that the system has put them in a cage.”
He also advised the government to embrace the deployment of technology for many of the assignments that are creating avenues for police to brutalize people and believe that doing so will help reduce the level of contact between the people and the police which he believes will help resolve many of the complaints of the agitators.
In his own assessment, a retired Assistant Director, state Security, SSS, Adams Abu stressed that there had been changes but what Nigerians want could not be achieved within a period of a year.
While saying SARS had been scrapped and replaced, Abu noted that to have effective reformed police in Nigeria, it would take a lot of efforts and resources, noting that Nigeria lacks adequate resources to have the police reform Nigerians wanted.
He also pointed out that criminality in form of fraud, ritual killing, robbery, kidnapping and many other crimes had increased and advised Nigerians to have attitudinal change towards criminality in other to have a crime free society.
The Hope
