Abuja (Nigeria), Oct 20 (AP) Nigerian police officers fired tear gas at protesters on Thursday in Lagos who were marking the second anniversary of demonstrations against police brutality that turned deadly.

Participants said they had gathered at the Lekki toll gate to draw attention to the fact that police brutality accusations remain rife despite promises of reform back in 2020.

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A police spokesman, though, told the Associated Press the tear gas was fired at “lawless people."

"Tear gas was used on them to disperse them as that was the least harmful thing we could have done,” said Benjamin Hundeyin, a Lagos police spokesman.

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Oke Ridwan, a human rights lawyer and activist, insisted that the protesters were demonstrating peacefully.

"(The police) prefer to go out there preventing people from protesting instead of actually solving the problems so that people won't have any need to protest in the first place,” Ridwan said.

“People are still getting brutalized and extorted (by the police) and the political will to correct this is not there,” he added.

In October 2020, protests against police erupted across Nigeria because of a now-disbanded police unit that was known as SARS. The demonstrations — dubbed the #EndSARS movement — came amid widespread accusations of brutality, unwarranted arrests and bribery.

Then on October 20, security forces fired live ammunition at crowds gathered at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos. Eleven people were killed and four others left missing and presumed dead, according to judicial panel report released last year that called it a “massacre”.

The human rights watchdog says that more than 40 protesters who were arrested that day “are still languishing in prisons."

The watchdog added that panels set up to investigate allegations of police brutality “have failed to deliver justice to hundreds of victims.” (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)