The coroner concluded that the police shot the deceased.
A coroner's inquest to unravel the circumstances surrounding the death of Jumoke Oyeleke has indicted the police.
The coroner, Mukaila Fadeyi, on Monday at the Magistrate Court in Ogba, Lagos, said the police caused her death.
Ms Oyeleke, 25, was shot dead on 3 July, when the police attempted to disperse the peaceful Yoruba Nation rally at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park in Ojota by firing guns and tear gas canisters into the air.
"The only logical conclusion is that the deceased died from a weapon by the Nigerian police," the coroner said.
"The deceased deserve our sympathy."
Background
When the news of her death became public, the police swiftly denied complicity, saying that they never fired "a single bullet" at the rally.
However, the autopsy report countered their position.
In a bid to get to the root of the incident, the state government set up an inquest, a fact-finding tribunal to determine the circumstances surrounding her death.
The inquest had the mandate to establish the identity of the deceased as well as how, when and where she died. It was also asked to provide recommendations to forestall a reoccurrence.
The inquest which started in August 2021, had six witnesses including the deceased's mother, Ifeoluwa Oyeleke; an assistant commissioner of police; Tunde Adeniran; and Sunday Soyemi, a pathologist with the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital.
Also, a trader, David Okebe, told the coroner that when he visited the scene of the incident in April, he saw some unidentified police officers in uniform ransacking the deceased after she was shot. The police officers then left her for dead, he said.
Recommendations
The coroner said that there is a need for "training, retraining and reorientation of the police on the right to hold protests especially in a democratic setting."
He urged the Inspector-General of Police to "fish out the bad eggs and ensure that they are brought to book to forestall further accidental killings."
He also recommended that the federal government compensate the family of the deceased.
He advised the police authorities to provide mental and medical checkups to their officers to determine their suitability to bear arms.
Mr Fadeyi stressed that the security operatives deployed to protest grounds should not be given live bullets.
He added that the scene of the incident - Ojota - should "never be cordoned off."
"The commissioner for justice should be mandated by the state government to forward the recommendations to the relevant authority for implementation," he said.
"There is a need for the state to fund the activities of the coroner's Act 2015, in order to stem unwarranted and unlawful killings in the state and to bring to book the perpetrators."
Speaking with journalists, Taiwo Olawanle, the lawyer to the family of the deceased, said that the verdict means that "there is hope for the ordinary masses."
He, however, insisted that the culprit should be fished out and recommended for prosecution by the police.
The police have yet to react to the findings as of the time of this report.