[READ] The police believe my husband is a ‘nobody,’ that is why they are shielding his killer

No 28, Aina Street, Shogunle area of Ikeja, Lagos has continued to play host to a horde of sympathisers, who have ceaselessly thronged the house since 38-year-old father of three, Azeez Omotosho, was shot point-blank last week Saturday by a police corporal attached to the Shogunle Police Division, Lagos.

But in the midst of the ruckus sat glumly the deceased’s widow, Sherifat, holding on tightly to her two children. The girls’ young minds seemed to be piecing together the reason why sorrow had overshadowed the house.

Her third child, a seven-month-old toddler, had been taken off her hands by a relative, who felt the woman was not in any condition to take care of the baby as she was still in shock of her husband’s brutal murder in her presence.

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Azeez was reportedly shot by the allegedly inebriated police corporal identified simply as Gabriel at the front of the house where the victim lived with his family on Oyegunwa Street, Shogunle, a short distance away from his family house on Aina Street.

PUNCH had reported on November 4 that the deceased was in his car with his wife and one of his children when he went to intervene in a disagreement between some policemen and a brother to a friend of his. He was shot dead in the process.

At the family house on Aina Street on Tuesday, the sympathisers came and left,  parting with words of prayers and consolation but Sherifat’s expression remained the same, one of intense pain and loss.

As she spoke with Saturday PUNCH, her pain manifested with each word.

“The police authorities believe my husband is a ‘nobody’. This is why they think they can sweep this matter under the rug. If my husband is a son of someone ‘big’ in the society, heads would already be rolling right now,” she said.

She shook her head and spread her hands open, skyward and said: “That policeman cut short my husband’s life. But this is not just about a life lost. This is about our children’s lives that have been changed forever.

“My sadness is not just for losing my husband. I lost our hardworking breadwinner. The police authorities who are probably trying their best to cover this up now are not thinking about the fact that the education of my children has been halted now because there is no way I can afford to send them to school for now.

“Their father was all I had. He told me that he would ensure that his children get all the education they want. He was particularly concerned about their education. He was willing to shoulder the responsibility of his children’s education to any stage required. God will judge them if they cover up the man that shot him.”

Asked if she was working before her husband’s death, Sherifat said she engaged in petty trading, but added that it was inadequate to finance her children’s education.

The two young daughters of the deceased, who sat with their mother as she spoke, looked on silently. One could only wonder how traumatised the oldest child, Aliya, still was, as she was said to have witnessed the policeman shoot her father a second time.

“Yesterday, the Chairman of the Local Government Council in this area came to pay us a visit, but as soon as Aliya saw the policemen that accompanied him, she ran inside the house. She is still afraid of policemen because of what she saw one of them do to her father. Her younger sister too has been saying that policemen took her father away,” Sherifat told Saturday PUNCH.

The widow was bitter when she spoke about the toddler she is nursing.

“That child will never know his father. How can someone kill the father of my three children and believe the matter will go away like that? Because they think we are not a rich family?” she said.

She said Azeez, whom she got married to eight years ago, was never a thug and that any attempt by the police to label him as a troublemaker would mean they are heartless.

However, the siblings of the victim have maintained that their brother must not be allowed to die without consequences for the killers.

Azeez’s elder brother, Mustapha, told Saturday PUNCH that his brother was shot without provocation.

“When the Shogunle Divisional Police Officer came to visit in company with the chairman of the local government covering this area, what he said pointed to the fact that he was trying to cover the culprit.

“He said the policeman was beaten by thugs before he released the shot that killed my brother. That was a lie. We took a photograph of the policeman when he was put in a cell in the police station. There was no single injury on him.

“We showed the DPO the photographs, which had no evidence of him being beaten. He was shocked that we had such evidence. But he admitted that the policeman and his colleague at the scene were on an illegal assignment.”

Police spokesperson, Ngozi Braide, had said last Sunday that the policemen were on a “stop and search” mission to quell the fighting that erupted on the street where the victim was shot.

She had said that some “hoodlums” hit Gabriel on the head with a bottle and tried to snatch his rifle. But the family of the deceased said none of that happened.

It was not clear which stage the investigation into the matter had reached as her lines were not available when our correspondent attempted to speak with her on Tuesday.

Azeez’s murder is an addition to the statistics of killing of civilians that policemen in Lagos have allegedly perpetrated.

In January 2013, a police corporal shot a young man suspected to be a ‘tout’ for refusing to give him N500 at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.

Three months later, a trader was shot dead by policemen at Daleko Bus Stop on the Mushin-Isolo Expressway. Some policemen who fled on motorcycles thereafter were later arrested.

In August, 36-year-old Olalekan Azeez was shot dead by a policeman at Ladega area of Ikorodu, Lagos after he tried to prevent his motorcycle from being taken away by the Rapid Response Squad in the area.

In October, Rafiu Adeniji, was shot in the chest by a policeman at Mangoro on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway after he challenged them for causing an accident in which his vehicle was damaged.

His six-year-old daughter was in the car when he was shot by a policeman who later fled with his colleagues.

A few hours after Adeniji’s death, Ganiyu Adedoyin was killed by policemen attached to the Makinde Division during a protest embarked upon by youth reacting to Adeniji’s death.

-Punch
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...this is very sad..We Need Justice In This Case....Nigeria police we are watching!

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