The picture above is a man who was shot dead by
policemen attached to the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad allegedly, during weekend,
in Ijaye-Ojokoro area of Lagos, His wife has called on the Inspector General of
Police to bring her husband’s killers to book.
Her late husband identified as Eze Okoro according to report, had just finished
having his supper with his wife when he decided to stay outside with a friend,
owing to power outage around 11p.m.
The deceased’s wife ,Ugonna, alleged
that the policemen snuffed out the life of Eze few metres from his residence at
1 Oguntolu Street, Ijaiye-Ojokoro.
Ugonna said her husband of over 15
years had just finished eating and had gone to relax with a neighbour, Chinedu
Nnwanu, and his pregnant wife, Nneka as he usually did when there was power
outage at night.
She said, “My husband had just finished
having dinner and he stepped outside to see our neighbours who live opposite
our house. They usually relax outside whenever there is power outage.
“A few minutes before 11pm, we heard
sporadic gunshots and out of panic, I held unto my seven-year-old son and ran
for cover. Few minutes later when the shooting abated, I tried to reach my
husband on his mobile phone but he was not picking it up.”
Ugonna said at that point she started
to imagine that something was amiss.
“I summoned courage and stepped out of
the compound and immediately noticed that my husband and his friends were not
at the spot. I started yelling out my husband’s name but there was no answer,”
she said.
She said after some time, some
neighbours informed her that from their windows, they observed some policemen
carrying a man whom they suspected was lifeless into their vehicle.
In a state of confusion, she was able
to pull a call through to some of her siblings and that of her husband who
immediately formed a search party for their relation and the policemen who were
alleged to have taken away the body
She said they visited the Ijaye-Ojokoro
Police Station under whose jurisdiction the incident occurred but all attempts
to locate her husband proved abortive.
“Our search that night failed to yield
the expected result as the officers on duty claimed that no such incident was
ever reported to them neither had any team of policemen told them that they
were operating in the area,” she said.
Eze’s widow said the following day, some employees of a hotel in the area told her that the policemen who had come to operate the previous night were from the Federal SARS.
She said she was told by a senior officer that her husband was killed in error and that his corpse had been taken to Yaba Military Hospital’s morgue.
“On getting to Federal SARS command, some junior officers apparently wanting to cover up their colleagues’ error denied the command’s complicity in the killing. However, a senior officer intervened by not only admitting that they killed Eze in error, but informed that his corpse was deposited at the Yaba Military Hospital’s morgue,” she said.
A resident, who craved anonymity, said the policemen had also attempted to kill others in the area after mistaking them for robbers but Eze was the only unfortunate person.
He said, “When the shooting started, Eze and his friends were running helter-skelter. The policemen first of all approached Nneka but she immediately shouted ‘please don’t shoot me, I am pregnant’. That was how she and her husband were spared.
“After Nneka and Chinedu got inside, we heard Eze begging the policemen and shouting that he was not a thief but the policemen obviously did not believe him because we heard gunshots soon after.”
Eze’s widow called on the police authorities to make sure that her husband’s killers were brought to justice.
When contacted on the telephone, the spokesman for the Federal SARS, Lekan Ogundare, said he was not aware of the incident but promised to find out.
