From CHRISTIANA EKPA, Lokoja
Odu-Ochele community in Dekina Local Government of Kogi has petitioned the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Solomon Arase over the alleged “Unwarranted killing” of one Farouk Isiaka by the Police on September 21.
The petition signed by Mr Williams Aliwo of W.A. Aliwo & Co, counsel to the community dated September 28, 2015 and presented by Dr Umar Ismailia one of the community leaders was made available to National Daily on Tuesday in Lokoja.
The community said that heavily armed policemen had on the fateful day invaded Odu-Ochele in seven Toyota Hilux vans in search of one Zekeri.
The petitioners said that the police arrived at the fenced compound of Mr Isiaka Omajenu, the father of the wanted Zekeri, forced their way into all the rooms in about five buildings in the compound asking: “Where is Zekeri, where is that armed robber called Zekeri.?”
After a futile search for Zekeri, the police, according to the community, arrested his parents and pushed them into one of the vans to take to Lokoja and the deceased who was also one of the siblings of Zekeri questioned the rational for arresting his parents.
“If you came to arrest Zekeri and cannot find him why my parents”, Farouk had questioned but the question was said to have irked the police who shot and killed him “under the watchful eyes of his parents, wife and two children.”
The police were said to have taken the corpse, the arrested parents along with the deceased wife and two children and drove off only to drop the children by the roadside at Agbeji under nobody’s care after about a 20-minute drive.
The community described the deceased who was a Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) holder in Primary Education Studies and Political Science from Kogi State College of Education, Ankpa as a humble and easy going person.
The petitioners said that on arrival in Lokoja, the police, “knowing what they did was unprofessional and dastardly”, promptly charged the two women (Mother and wife of the deceased) to court on “Trumped up charges.
The community held that the deceased was “innocently assassinated even when he was harmlessly armless. He offered no resistance deserving of the kind of treatment that the police dastardly gave him. Yet the police are not releasing his corpse to the family for decent burial.
“The community and the family particularly, is traumatized by this barbaric act that we have to cry to your office on their behalf for release.”
It urged the IGP to intervene and redress the situation to stem recurrence and also to release the corpse to the family for burial urging him not to allow the matter to be swept under the carpet.
Meanwhile the Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Emmanuel Ojukwu while parading the corpse and family of the deceased among 72 suspects arrested for various offences described the deceased as an armed robber who engaged the police in a shootout.
Father of the deceased, Isiaka Omajenu according to the commissioner was arrested for armed robbery while the women were charged with shielding criminals.