A human rights lawyer and activist, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, has demanded that the Nigeria Customs Service should compensate the families of seven persons who died in a stampede that ensued during the sale of low-cost rice at the Customs office in Lagos.
It should be recalled that Nigeria Customs announced the sale of 25kg bags of rice for N10,000, following a directive by President Bola Tinubu.
However, during the sales, which began on February 23, seven people died in a stampede at the Customs Zonal Headquarters in Yaba, Lagos State.
The tragic incident led to the immediate suspension of the exercise.
But, in a statement by Falana, he said it was sad that up until now the authorities of Customs had not deemed it fit to identify the families of the victims to at least commiserate with them, adding that the NCS must take full responsibility for the incident.
“Since a bag of rice was selling for N77,000 at the material time, it ought to have occurred to the Nigeria Customs Service that its zonal headquarters in Yaba would not be able to contain the crowd that had been invited to purchase a 25kg bag of rice at N10,000.
“Therefore, the authorities of the Nigeria Customs Service should take urgent steps to identify the bereaved families of the seven deceased citizens to pay them adequate monetary compensation.
“However, if our advice is ignored by the authorities, we shall not hesitate to approach the Federal High Court to enforce the fundamental right of each of the deceased persons to life as guaranteed by Section 33 of the Nigerian Constitution and Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights,” Falana said.
He however, urged the NCS to lift the suspension of the sale of the remaining bags of rice without any further delay, saying that to avoid another stampede, the distribution should be carried out through the appropriate local government councils and local government development areas in Lagos and other states of the federation.
