(FoxNews.com) Hours after a shooting at a toll gate in Lekki, Lagos state, details continue to emerge about the shooting.
Authorities believe at least 10 shots were fired at the toll gate after gunshots rang out Friday evening near the giant Sovereign Trust Insurance building in the popular business and residential area. Five people died, according to Nigeria’s State Security Service, and the Federal Road Safety Commission says 36 were wounded.
Pfc. Timothy Jack of the SSS said on Saturday that the agency believes that the shooting was a result of an altercation between drivers at the toll gate.
Jack, according to a media kit provided by the SSS, said he could not clarify how many shots were fired, whether four or five, or why they were fired.
Seventeen of the injured were treated at hospitals, where Saturday was a closed-door investigation.
Mariko Charley, a filmmaker who lives in Lekki, told CNN that her area had “some sort of community dispute of some sort.” She speculated that the shooting may have been over a man whose motorcycle was stuck in traffic or over any disagreement of business.
Charley told CNN on Saturday that another motorist tried to get closer to rescue the driver, but an argument broke out and the motorist tried to intervene before being shot. She also said that she suspected gangs who were already at the entrance of the toll gate when the argument started.
“That’s not normal. They’re not here for any of that,” Charley said of the shooting.
Chris Agbese, a journalist who is also a member of Friends of Lekki (FOL), a community group that aims to improve and stabilize the area, said that he is trying to get access to CCTV footage to get more details.
“Any kind of confrontation that you have when a person’s life is involved, you have to watch for that and that’s why we’re waiting to receive security footage that shows what happened,” Agbese told FoxNews.com.
Dillon Lawrence, the chairman of Friends of Lekki, told FoxNews.com that the fight started when members of a rival gang entered a different area of the area and “started engaging in a fight over some business deal between them.”
“There is a rivalry going on here and it’s gotten out of hand. (The fight) led to an argument and a shooting,” Lawrence told FoxNews.com.
The shooting comes just two weeks after President Muhammadu Buhari has been forced to launch an investigation into allegations of official corruption in the Nigeria police force, an agency that also is widely accused of arbitrary shooting and torture. Buhari and his top security officials last week sacked police commissioner Fatai Owoseni after reports revealed that he had ordered officers to kill street gangs in a very violent manner.
Owoseni has denied such allegations.
Britain’s Channel 4 news reported Sunday that undercover hidden cameras were shown on one of the trucks carrying Buhari’s convoy on his recent trip to London. The camera in the truck allegedly recorded the convoy speeding through a roundabout and deliberately colliding with a truck carrying rubbish.
Pfc. Jack could not confirm the link but told FoxNews.com, “When we got the information, we initiated an investigation into the incident.”
“We’re talking to the chief of road safety to see what we can do to prevent such thing from happening again,” he said.
FoxNews.com’s Les Christie contributed to this report.
FoxNews.com’s Niles Niemuth and The Associated Press contributed to this report.