By Onyewuchi Ojinnaka
The Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution set up by the Lagos State Government following the nationwide #EndSARS protest by Nigerian youths who demanded the scrapping of Federal Anti Robbery Squad (FSARS) over brutality and extra-judicial killings began sitting on Tuesday October 27, 2020 at its venue, Lagos Court of Arbitration, Lekki.
Four complainants, who claimed to have been brutalized by the SARS, attended the sitting to testify.
The panel, headed by Justice Doris Okuwobi (rtd), was set up to examine cases of victims of human rights abuses by men of the recently-scrapped Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and Lekki Tollgate incident in Lagos.
The first case/complaint was that of one Mr Okoliagu Abunike, a father of five, who narrated to the panel how he was in 2012 arrested by policemen from Ojo Police Station at the instance of his boss, who accused him of embezzling company’s funds.
According to Abunike, at the Ojo Police Station, he was severely beaten, humiliated and tore his clothes and paraded him round Alaba market, and after all the maltreatment, the Ojo police handed him over to SARS, which detained him at Ikeja for 47 days without being taken to court.
He told the panel that men of SARS, including one Inspector Sunday, alias Baba Ijapa; and one ASP Haruna, tortured him so much so that two of his teeth were extracted.
Abunike said, “I still have some of the scars all over my body. My family didn’t know where I was. When they eventually knew and my mother and wife came to SARS office in Ikeja, they started beating my mother and wife in my presence.
“While I was in detention, they took over my house, they sold all my properties, including my Acura jeep, 17KVA generator, my inverter, my three blackberry phones and my land.”
He said after spending 47 days in SARS cell, he was hurriedly charged before a magistrate court after a lawyer hired by his family wrote a petition.
Abunike said on getting out of detention he filed a fundamental rights suit, adding that Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court in Lagos in 2016 awarded N10 million damages in his favour against the police and his former boss.
Abunike, was saddened that four years after the judgement, all efforts to enforce it and claim the money had proved abortive.
He urged the panel to compel SARS to comply with the N10 million judgement or return his seized properties to him.
“How can somebody have judgement since 2016 and till date he is still walking around, getting nothing, no compliance whatsoever? That was why I told my lawyer that since there is a judicial panel in Lagos now, I should come here to see whether they have the capacity to enforce the court judgment.”
Asked whether the magistrate court found him guilty of any crime, Abunike answered in the negative.
The panel admitted a copy of Justice Buba’s N10 million judgement as an exhibit and said its decision would be made known in seven days.
The second case was that of one Ndukwe Ekekwere, who was brought to the panel in a wheel chair by his mother.
Though his case could not be heard by the panel on the grounds that the SARS operative, who is the accused in the case was absent.
Ekekwere claimed that he became paralysed and was confined to a wheelchair after he was pushed off a two-storey building in 2008 by men of SARS.
While adjourning the case till November 2, 2020, Justice Okuwobi said though she noted the difficulty in bringing the man in the wheel chair to the hearing venue, it was necessary in the interest of justice for the panel to give the accused SARS operative an opportunity for fair hearing.
Two other cases were called but they could not go on as well because the complainants were absent.