Policemen attached to
the Badagry Police
Division, Lagos State, and some hoodlums have been accused of killing a 25-year-old undergraduate of Delta State
University, Ifechukwude Nwainokpor, and his friend, identified simply as Kazeem.
They were attacked and beaten to death by a mob at the Ajara area of Badagry on the ground that their faces looked strange in the neighborhood while policemen watched on.
An eight-minute video clip of the
gruesome killing, which was made
available to PUNCH Metro, showed the two victims handcuffed together. They were covered in their own blood and beaten to death with sticks. Tyres were also put round their necks.
A correspondent, who visited the family of Nwainokpor on Tuesday, learnt that the lynching took place around 3pm on July 21, 2013 in Ajara area of Badagry, a community not far from Nwainokpor's family home.
His father, Samuel, said that his son was arrested while passing through a street in the area but a misunderstanding later
ensued and the hoodlums pounced on him and Kazeem, adding that his son was a final year student of Geology and
Mining.
Samuel said because there had been a robbery in Ajara four days earlier, some of the residents were on the lookout for strange faces and so when the youth saw two unknown young men, they accosted them and an argument ensued.
He said the youth called the head of the vigilante group in the area, one Asiribo and it was decided that the boys be taken to the Baale, Agano Oniyon of Agamade Ajara. But as they were going, Asiribo, while trying to return his gun into its pouch, mistakenly shot himself inbthe stomach and died. "Asiribo's deathninfuriated the youth, who blamed the boys for his death. The mob picked up sticks and beat them to death. Policemen were there," he said.
The Nwainokpor family berated the
Divisional Police Officer, Badagry Police Station, Dankoli Mohammed, for the manner he treated the case.
"When thebpolicemen came to take the corpses, guns were planted on them. Policemen at the station told the DPO that they were robbers. Their corpses were taken along with that Asiribo to Badagry General Hospital's mortuary," he said.
The spokesperson for the state policecommand, Ngozi Braide, said, "The incident is quite pathetic. Even if they were armed robbers, no one has the right to take the life of another. Why then do we have the police and the judiciary? The Nigerian police as well as the law condemn mob action and jungle justice. The commissioner of police has set up a high- powered investigation body to investigate the matter."
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