Eyewitness accounts and visible injuries confirm that CP Moshood Jimoh did not merely give orders; he personally joined his men in beating Soweto to a pulp. Soweto was booted to the ground, repeatedly beaten, and brutalized while defenseless. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, his clothes torn, and the torn fabric was used to blindfold him, an act of humiliation and torture, before he was violently driven to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Yaba.
The brutal assault on Comrade Hassan Taiwo Soweto during the anti-eviction, anti-demolition, and anti–land-grabbing protest in Lagos was not an accident of policing, it was a deliberate act of state terror personally led and participated in by CP Moshood Jimoh. Following the granting of bail to Soweto, graphic evidence has surfaced exposing the horrifying scale of violence inflicted on him under the direct command of the Lagos State Commissioner of Police.
Eyewitness accounts and visible injuries confirm that CP Moshood Jimoh did not merely give orders; he personally joined his men in beating Soweto to a pulp. Soweto was booted to the ground, repeatedly beaten, and brutalized while defenseless. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, his clothes torn, and the torn fabric was used to blindfold him, an act of humiliation and torture, before he was violently driven to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Yaba.
There, Soweto was thrown into a cell and deliberately denied food and water, further subjecting him to inhumane and degrading treatment. This was not lawful arrest or crowd control; it was torture, aimed at breaking the spirit of an activist whose only “offense” was standing with poor and working-class communities resisting forceful eviction and land grabbing.
The brutality extended far beyond Soweto. Elderly men and women, infants, and peaceful protesters in Oworoshoki, Makoko, and Owode-Onirin were choked with tear gas, shot at with live ammunition, and beaten indiscriminately. Several victims were shot in the leg, and many remain hospitalized. Some did not survive. These were unarmed civilians exercising their right to protest.
Under CP Moshood Jimoh’s leadership, the Lagos State Police Command has operated as a private army for land grabbers and powerful interests, unleashing lethal violence on defenseless communities. This pattern of repression, killings, maiming, torture, and intimidation, amounts to crimes against humanity.
If a senior police officer can act with such open savagery, one can only imagine the trail of abuses committed throughout his rise in the force. CP Moshood Jimoh’s hands are stained with the blood of innocent Nigerians. This brutality must not go unaccounted for.
We demand the immediate removal of CP Moshood Jimoh and his prosecution for crimes against humanity in accordance with international law and the Geneva Conventions. Justice must be served for Soweto, for the injured, for the dead, and for all communities resisting forceful eviction and land grabbing in Lagos State.
Francis Nwapa
Revolutionary Activist