Nigerian filmmaker Ideh Chukwuma aka ‘One Soul’ who was reported to be one of those that witnessed the event of Tuesday, October 20, when soldiers opened fire on unarmed protesters camping at the Lekki Toll Plaza has stated that he never saw any dead body at the scene.
The filmmaker in an interview with Premium Times Saturday, October 24 further said he was not at the protest area when the shooting began but was driving by later and saw some injured people and he helped take some of them to the hospital.
Describing what he saw that Tuesday night, One Soul said he will call it an assault or a raid, not a massacre.
One Soul said he can confirm that the protesters were shot at and many were injured in the process but he didn’t see any dead body.
He said:
What I will say is, I have been hearing people say “Lekki massacre, Lekki massacre.” I have to be honest with you if you Google the term “massacre,” massacre is a situation where a group of people were being killed by rebels or the military and going by that particular point, I would have been able to tell you that I saw a lot of dead bodies, this is how they killed them, there were a lot of dead bodies and so it was a massacre.
But from the time I came, I didn’t see any dead bodies but I can certainly tell you that there was a shooting, an unauthorised shooting. I will call it a raid, I will call it assault. I am going to term it assault and raid. That is what I would use. It was an assault and I and I may be wrong but because I didn’t see those bodies, and I have not seen a family member that has come to cry and say one two or three persons have died.
If DJ Switch had seen that, she’s in the best position to say that because she was there. I cannot say she’s wrong. I was out of that circle. I was a few meters away. They were at the toll gate and I was a few meters away from them. I wasn’t there, I was at Lekki Phase 1. I can’t tell you what the military’s approach on their arrival was. So, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that they shot one, two, three, four, or five people. But I can certainly tell you that I took a lot of gunshot victims to the hospital.
One Soul said DJ Switch might not be wrong to say that 15 people died because he personally took 13 injured people to the hospital.
If I took about 13 people to the hospital myself, minus the ones that the governor confirmed that were injured, he said about thirty, that is forty-something, DJ Switch might not be wrong. I took 13 to the hospital. So, if DJ Switch said she saw 15 dead people, by her own records, because she was there so she can speak on that part. I can’t speak on that and none of the thirteen people that I took to the hospital has died. They are still alive and some of them have been discharged.
Read One Soul’s full interview with Premium Times HERE:
