The immediate past Director of Army Public Relations and Information, retired Brigadier General Sani Usman, has said the blank ammunition was used to disperse #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki Tollgate by the Nigerian Army.
The former spokesman of the Nigerian Army said this on Thursday on ARISE TV News.
Usman said: “If you look at the canisters, they were blank ammo and blank ammo don’t even kill.
“At a close range, maybe 100 metres, maybe it will have some pigmentation on your skin.
“Remember the military are armed and by the nature of their training, they are trained to kill and I think the military in its wisdom instead of using live ammunition decided to use blank armour, which is meant for training.
“I think they should be commended for that.
“Otherwise there would have been serious collateral damage, but they were professional enough to have done that.”
On the claim by Amnesty International that several lives were lost in the incident, Usman said he was not shocked because the global rights group had been known for making such unsubstantiated claims about Nigerian.
He said: “There was a time when I was the Director Army Public Relations, Amnesty International accused the Nigerian military of killing over 5,000 people in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
“Common sense would have told you that there was no hospital with the capacity to contain even 50 dead bodies or 100.
This and many other spurious allegations have been going on against the Nigerian military by the Amnesty International.”