According to a report by News Central TV, on Wednesday February 18, 2026, a former Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, has provided a startling eyewitness account of a rare confrontation between police officers and soldiers during the Occupy National Assembly protests.
Dalung, who was among the protesters demanding electoral transparency, described a scene of total confusion where security forces allegedly turned their chemical deterrents on one another after demonstrators were chased into a nearby forest.
According to Dalung, the situation escalated when police began aggressively dispersing peaceful protesters at the National Assembly gates.
He noted that while he remained defiant, many demonstrators were forced to retreat toward the main road and into a forested area across from the legislative complex.
“I stood under the tree watching them demonstrating their madness and then shooting tear gases with joy and insulting the oppressors. I didn’t move away from there. I went there. They went they said sent the people up to the main road and then some of them went into the forest that was opposite it,” Dalung recounted.
The former minister explained that the police continued to fire tear gas canisters into the forest to flush out the retreating crowd.
However, the forest apparently housed a military or security outpost, leading to an unexpected counter-attack from soldiers stationed there.
“So they also started shooting their tear gases following the protesters into the forest there and I think that is also a security or military location there. So those soldiers who were there they started reacting,” Dalung said.
The result was a crossfire of tear gas between two arms of the Nigerian security apparatus.
“And so there was also a counter shooting of tear gas from that location towards where the police were shooting and then the police now decided to withdraw and that gave some sanity but they held their ground,” he added…. Discover More News
Leave a Reply