A petitioner, Adekunle Ayodele is seeking the intervention of the Lagos State Judicial panel on Restitution for victims of SARS-related abuses to get quality medical treatment for his badly damaged leg.
He appeared before the panel on Friday to give evidence on how he was stopped by a team of policemen at a checkpoint at Iyana-Ejigbo around 5:30am on September 9, 2005 while he was driving his younger brother to a nearby bus stop. According to him, they requested that he presents his vehicle documents and as he was about to alight, one of the officers shot at his left thigh. Mr Ayodele says the policemen who came in a black pickup vehicle ran away after the shooting, and that passersby assisted in taking them to the isolo general hospital.
“Around Ikotun, we met an officer in another police vehicle who offered to follow us to the hospital, where I was given first aid treatment and referred to the national orthopedic hospital, igbobi, Lagos, because the bullet had affected the bone in that region.”
But, Mr Ayodele bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t able to identify neither the officer who shot him nor the other who gave him aid, at the time.
During cross examination, he told police counsel, Cyril Ejiofor, “I unsuccessfully traced them to the Okota police station and the other one at Ejigbo. I couldn’t see the inscription on the vehicle they drove in because it was still dark.”
The petitioner also denied Mr Ejiofor’s assertion that the shooter could have been a cultist and not a genuine police officer. But he agreed that the gun shot could have been an accidental discharge and that he didn’t write a petition on the matter to the Inspector General of Police.
Despite an objection by the police counsel against the admission of two pictures showing the extent of the injury on grounds that it didn’t show the face of the petitioner, the panel admitted them as evidence after the Petitioner who wept at a point opened the deep wounds for all to see. He says he is still in pains and that pus usually comes out of the area.
On the non-production of any medical documents to prove his case, the witness said he lost them while changing residence from ikotun to Ikorodu. Justice Doris Okuwobi (rtd) who chairs the panel ordered that a summons be issued to the Igbobi Orthopedic hospital for his medical records to be obtained,so as to help with his Petition, ahead of the next adjournment date slated for May the 4th.
In the petition of Mr and Mrs Julius Adeogun seeking justice for the alleged killing of their son, the panel ordered the police counsel to serve the Petitioners with the Legal Advice issued by the State’s then Director of Public Prosecution on the matter, which he now seeks to rely on in his accusations of falsehood levelled against the Petitioners and their counsel.
Despite a 2016 judgement delivered by the then serving Justice Okuwobi in the case of one Lucky Oliseh who was detained at the SARS unit since 2014, where the court ordered his arraignment and a two million naira award against the police which are yet to be obeyed, the family now suspects he has been killed. But, the panel says it is yet to reach a decision on whether to stop hearing about thirty-eight of such matters that have already been determined in regular courts so as to lessen its burden.
