News Bribe-taking policemen allegedly shoot at couple, kill wife

Bribe-taking policemen allegedly
shoot at couple, kill wife

Police officers attached to the Isheri Osun Police
Division in Lagos state have been accused of
shooting at a tricycle driver Godwin Ekpo and his
family, killing his breastfeeding wife Idongesit.
This incident allegedly happened as the family
was returning from a church programme on
Wednesday night.
According to Punch , Godwin who is currently in a
critical condition at the Lagos State University
Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, was on his way home
from church when he met a team of police
officers allegedly extorting tricycle riders who
passed through Obalagbe bus stop.
In a bid to avoid them, Godwin attempted to
speed past them. This got the police officers
angry and one of them, a police corporal
identified as Aremu Musesiu, opened fire at his
tricycle with the bullet shattering his car, killing
his wife who was breastfeeding their 3 month old
baby at the time of the incident. The bullet also
pierced through Godwin's neck as he turned to
look at his wife and his child.
Seeing that they have caused a problem, the
police officers fled the scene of the incident.
Narrating what happened, a tricycle driver, Henry
Chibuzor, said “I was going home around 10pm
when I saw the eight-man team asking me to
stop at a checkpoint. I was there with four other
tricycle drivers. The man was coming from church
with his family. As he got to the junction, he
swerved and his tricycle mistakenly brushed their
patrol van. A policeman hit the tricycle’s
windscreen with a baton and damaged it. The
second policeman fired a bullet which hit the
woman in the neck, came out from the other side,
and hit her husband too.”
He said the policemen collected N5,000 from him
and also extorted money from other tricycle
drivers. Another witness, Kabiru Olaoye, while
narrating what happened, said the residents
quickly formed a crowd at the scene and
prevented the policemen from leaving. He added
that the cops called for reinforcement, adding
that officers of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad
and policemen from surrounding divisions arrived
at the scene and rescued the killer-cops.
Tricycle drivers in the community yesterday
staged a protest over the attack on the couple.
The protesters held placards, some of which read,
‘Isheri Police, your generation will suffer,’ ‘Stop
killing us,’ among others. The protest train went
to the Isheri Osun Police Station, where they met
a team of armed policemen in more than six
vans. An Armoured Personnel Carrier was also
mounted on the road to the station. The Financial
Secretary of the Committee for the Defence of
Human Rights, Lagos State branch, Chinanzor
Ifechiga, who led the protest, was brutalised and
her telephone seized by the Divisional Police
Officer as she was accused of filming the protest
and taking pictures. She was manhandled by
eight policemen, who struggled to take the phone
from her on the order of the DPO.
"The DPO said I was one of them (the police) and
I should not join the protesters. Because I
refused, he said I should release my phone to
him. He said he would disgrace me before
everybody. He pointed a gun at me and the crowd
dared him to shoot. He then ordered eight
policemen to beat me up because I refused to
give him my phone. He humiliated me before the
protesters. But I am determined to get justice for
the couple; and I want my phone back.”she said
Commenting on the incident, the Lagos state
Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, said the
police officer who fired the shot that killed Mrs
Ekpo have been arrested while the DPO of Isheri
Osun had also been issued a query for disobeying
the Inspector General of Police’s instruction.
Meanwhile the corpse of Mrs Ekpo has been
deposited at a mortuary while the children of the
couple are with the police where they being
catered for.