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Mother demands justice for son killed on birthday

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Pelumi Sulaimon, a 15-year-old Lagos student, was celebrating his birthday with his family and friends on February 26 when a soldier allegedly shot him dead at Makoko, in the Yaba area of Lagos State.

A military task force team, Operation MESA, had been reportedly mobilised by political thugs for reprisal on their opponents in the community on that fateful Sunday.

When the gun-wielding soldiers invaded the community, they shot indiscriminately as a stray bullet hit Pelumi while he was with his friends.

The officers were reportedly led by a thug identified simply as Nuru.

In a sudden switch, the dawn of joy that accompanied Pelumi’s birthday that morning got eclipsed by sorrow and tears.

The victim’s mother, Moibat,  who fainted twice, later suffered high blood pressure from the shock of her son’s death and was moved to a care home.

More than two months after the incident, the police and military are still scratching their heads for answers.

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, said no suspects had been arrested.

“You may want to ask the army about their men that shot that day,” he added.

The spokesperson for the 81 Division, Nigerian Army, Lt. Col. Olabisi Ayeni, said he was still trying to get to the root of the incident.

He said, “It will be investigated and if I get the details and find out that the story is true and that a soldier actually committed that kind of act, that soldier will be brought to book. That is what I can tell you about that now.”

But for Pelumi’s family, the wound is still fresh and has refused to heal.

learnt that his mother had been moved to her elder sister’s house in the Iwaya area of Lagos State for proper monitoring of her health.

 After several weeks of tracking, our correspondent found the bereaved 50-year-old woman last Tuesday.

The visibly distraught mother recalled that she last saw her son in a tricycle parked outside their premises.

She said, “I was indoors on that day around 3pm when he came to meet me that he wanted to eat and I told him that food was available before I later went to the bathroom. When I returned, he had gone outside to sit in a tricycle parked outside the premises, watching a movie on his sister’s phone. Then I called him to go and have his bath and he replied that he would do so after sunset.

“So, I went back inside to arrange the clothes we washed in the morning. It was not too long before I started to hear gunshots. I rushed out and I did not find him in the tricycle and that was how I started calling his name. The people around also said they saw him sitting in the tricycle. That was when his friends started running towards our house. When I asked them where he was, they said he was shot on their way to buy drinks and some other items to celebrate his birthday.”

Moibat said she immediately made an attempt to rush down to see her son, but she was held back by neighbours, who asked her to wait.

Her daughter, Aisha, later followed Pelumi’s friends to the spot where the incident happened.

While the mother waited to hear the true state of Pelumi’s condition, she allegedly fainted twice.

“I wanted to go and check him in the hospital but my neighbours did not allow me. They said it was not time for me to go. But before they broke the news of his death to me, I had fainted twice. It was my eldest son who later called my elder sister that he was dead,” she added.

While relieving the memories of her late son, she described him as calm, easy-going and multi-talented.

“They did not allow him to achieve what he promised to do for me. He decided that he wanted to learn handwork when he was six years old and he went to locate and enrol at a mechanic workshop by himself. I told him he was too young but he insisted. Since then, he knew the job so well that people came to seek his service at home.

“He was not someone who moved around unnecessarily. He went to school and was also an apprentice at a mechanic workshop. His routine was to go to school in the morning and when he returned, he resumed at the mechanic workshop,” she added.

Moibat said she had no premonition that her son would die when she decided to engage him in a heart-to-heart discussion the night before his birthday.

According to her, the conversation lasted till 12 midnight, as they rounded up with prayers.

“As the day was his birthday, his friends played football for him that morning to celebrate him. We used to buy gifts for him on his birthday. But on that day, he asked if I would celebrate it for him and I said I won’t be able to afford it because I did not have the money because of the elections.

“So, I said when his friends arrived, he could get them soft drinks and biscuits like they usually did for themselves. He agreed. The clothes he planned to wear were still on the bed when the incident happened,” she stated.

Moibat sells fruits in the community while she also alternates her schedule to carry out laundry services at people’s homes.

“I do all these to make sure that they succeed in life but they took my son from me,” she added.

Her only daughter, Aisha, was on hand to pacify her.

Aisha, who went to pick her late brother up after he was shot, said he fell three times and lost consciousness thereafter.

She said, “His friend said they first went to a viewing centre to watch football and from there, they headed for the place they wanted to go and buy biscuits and some drinks. It was on their way to the place that they started to hear gunshots.

“In the process of trying to run back home, a bullet hit Pelumi. His friends said he fell and stood up again to run. He fell three times until he could not stand again. That was when they ran home to tell us what happened.

“I went to the place and saw him lying on the floor; he had lost consciousness. I carried him while people around assisted me. That was when my senior brother joined and later carried him alone.

“Three hospitals rejected him before he was taken in at IDH. They gave him a drip and asked us to take him to Eko Hospital. We were about to leave when he gave up. So, we had to take him to a police station and he was taken to the mortuary.”

A neighbour, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the incident had affected the finances of the family and solicited help for Pelumi’s mother.

Pelumi’s family said after the incident, the police delayed in releasing his body for burial.

The police were said to have delayed the burial for 72 hours, as they kept tossing the family around in the process of trying to perfect the documentation of retrieving his body from the mortuary.

Aisha said, “Immediately he gave up that evening, we took his body to Yaba Police Station before he was taken to a mortuary.

“When we got there, a policewoman told us that they needed to write a letter to the Ikeja Police Command before we could obtain the report. They said we could not go ahead and bury him since it was a gunshot-related death and that if we went ahead to bury him without their approval, they would exhume the corpse after burial.

“So, because of what they said, my mum said she would not want them to do that to her son, so we had no choice but to do what they asked us to do. We had to pay for the letter.

“We reported back to the station as early as 7am on Monday with the hope of getting the report, so that we could bury him that same day. But that was where the whole delay started.

“We discovered that no letter was written at all. They also said the DPO was not around and that we had to wait. They delayed us for that day before we later realised that we were supposed to have gone to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Yaba, in the first place.

“When we got to the SCID around 5pm, they asked why we went to Yaba Police Station, that the station had nothing to offer us and also not in the best position to give us the report. So, we had to wait till Tuesday.”

According to Aisha, efforts to get the letter at the SCID came with its own challenges.

She said the family shuttled between the police unit and the court close to four times that same day while making corrections on an affidavit.

She said, “Some influential people in the area were forced to step in when they discovered that the police were frustrating us from processing the documentation.

“They had to tell them that the corpse was that of a young boy and asked why they were delaying us from getting the report. They also asked them if it was money that they wanted so as to allow his corpse to be released on time.”

Another family member, Musbau Ayinde, said the delay continued till Wednesday, as the family waited for the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of the SCID to append his signature.

 He said, “We were supposed to have signed the paper on Tuesday but they said the DCP was not available and that he won’t arrive until later in the evening.

“We waited till around 6pm before they asked us to come as early as possible the following day. We got there around 7am but we were delayed again till around 11am. They did not tell us whether the DCP was around or not.

“We had to call some politicians in the area again. It was when they arrived that we got to know that the DCP was around all the while. The DCP said he was not told we were around. By the time he would sign, it was discovered that there was a need for some corrections to be made. We had to go to the court that same day before we later came back to get it signed.”

The body was later released and buried in accordance with Islamic rites.

Extrajudicial killings involving military officers are on the rise in the country.

In February 2014, a 36-year-old tricyclist, Richard Samuel, was allegedly killed by an OP MESA official, simply identified as Mohammed, over the tricyclist’s failure to pay an illegal daily levy of N500.

On August 22, 2012, armed men suspected to be members of the , were also alleged to have killed a rider, Yusuf Opadijo Oluwaseun, during an argument.

In July 2022, a Senior Secondary School two student of Unity High School, Ago Ika, Abeokuta, identified as Sadiat, was reported to have been allegedly shot dead by operatives of .

The security men were reportedly chasing a suspected Internet fraudster, who escaped arrest, when they opened fire which hit the 15-year-old student, who was walking home after school hours.

It is not clear if any of those involved in the killings were punished.

A security expert, Akin Adeyi, said the failure of military leaders to probe and punish extrajudicial killings led to impunity.

He said, “It is not even from the perspective of security, but from the angle of bad leadership because taking someone else’s life is the height of crime that you can commit. And when it happens and the leadership cannot probe it, that is the reason why we have a reoccurrence of such an act.

“These are people being paid with taxpayers’ money. I think it is the height of irresponsibility on the part of the military leadership. The leadership of the military and the leadership of the country itself are culpable.

“The soldier must have also been hobnobbing with the political thugs, because how easy would it be for a hoodlum to approach a military man to assist them to fight against some people. There must have been an existing rapport between them. Most of the hoodlums we are talking about ended up getting enlisted into our security agencies and we give them guns.”

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, called on the military authorities to caution their men from wearing uniform in public.

He said, “An inspector was killed by soldiers last year and we are handling that. Those who were indicted have to be arrested and prosecuted. Soldiers should stop wearing uniforms in town. If they are not on duty, they are supposed to appear in town like civilians. There is a report where their own bosses also told them to stop wearing uniforms when they are not on duty. We are not under military rule, why should you wear a uniform?”

A human rights lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, said the judiciary and the media had roles to play in bringing culprits of extrajudicial killings to book.

He said, “Extrajudicial killing is a breach of the fundamental right to life under section 23 of the constitution and also a crime of murder under the criminal code and also an offence under the anti-torture act of 2017. Where a law enforcement agent takes the life of a person willfully in a manner that is not sanctioned by law, such killing deserves the prosecution of the culprit. The officer should be prosecuted in line with the law.

“What the deceased family should do is to file an action in court for the fundamental rights of the deceased and file a complaint with the police as a way of execution. Another way is to have the matter escalated in the media, because the way the country is terribly configured now, government agencies give attention to cases that come to public light. If matters are not reported in the media, it appears that the attitude is to treat such matters with indifference.”

The Executive Director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre, Mr Okechukwu Nwanguma, expressed reservations for the delay in processing the police report.

He said, “If the family wants to go ahead to bury him, the police should provide the document. For me, it is just another story of corruption and extortion of people who are grieving the loss of their loved one.”

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