By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
On December 8, 2019, the BBC published a report – Nigeria police: Issuing corpses and denials. The report quoted Dr Anthony Mbah, the chief medical director of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) lamenting that the large number of corpses deposited in the morgue of the hospital by the police overwhelmed their facility.
The log of the mortuary, according to the report showed that between June and November 2019, 76 bodies were deposited in the mortuary by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in Enugu State.
The report quoted the Enugu State Police Commissioner, Mohamed Zarewa saying: “I am not aware of that number you are talking. I am not aware, I am not aware,” he said to the BBC reporter who asked him about the corpses that SARS operatives deposited to the UNTH mortuary, an average of four per week.
Two Enugu SARS survivors told TheNiche and a team of Action Group on Free Civic Space (AGFCS) that they had conveyed corpses to the UNTH mortuary, and one of them explicitly said he witnessed on one of the occasions that the SARS operatives collected money.
Francis (real name withheld to protect him) was detained in Enugu SARS for four months from September 2009. He recounted an experience of a dead body transaction he said he experienced between SARS operatives and UNTH mortuary.
“There was a day we came out for assembly. After the assembly, Ugochukwu Uzoude (SARS operative) called me that we should carry Ugochukwu Akina to the theatre. The guy could not walk. The guy already had bullet wounds. We carried the guy to that place.
“Uzoude told the guy to lie facing down. The guy lied lay down and faced the ground. He told the guy he wanted to snap his back so that he could carry him to court. So, the guy voluntarily lay down without handcuffs. He told me to stand closely so that I would see how they killed people. He shot the guy twice at the back. The guy died.
“He told us to carry the dead body. We carried the dead body to their vehicle – a red Hilux. We put the dead body inside the Hilux. Then he said that we should wash our hands. He then handcuffed me, put me inside the Hilux with the dead body. He paraded me around Enugu. My two sisters that came to serve me food that very day were already going back. They saw me, and started crying.
“He carried me to UNTH, they parked the vehicle. The mortuary attendant came with their hand gloves to carry the dead body. He said that they should allow me carry the dead body. They refused. They said that they don’t allow people to carry dead bodies into the mortuary. He then said they should bring water. They brought water. He said I should wash the floor of the vehicle. I washed it. He carried his gun. He swore by touching it with the tip of his tongue that if he did not bring me to that same mortuary in one-week time, let the gun kill him.
“I was there. Somebody counted N30,000 and gave to them. They shared the money – N10,000 each. From that money, they bought hot drink inside the UNTH hospital. They went to Four Corner, it’s a place close to UNTH. They bought bush meat there. They took me to my village and paraded me all over my village I was with just boxers,” Francis narrated.
Another Enugu SARS survivor, Godson ( real name also withheld), was also at the Enugu SARS facility for two months in 2009. He, like Francis, said he had ferried corpses to UNTH, and alleged transaction of those bodies. Although he admitted of not witnessing cash exchange, he was certain that the bodies were sold.
The interview went thus:
Question: Like how many people on average do you think they call out to go and kill every day?
Answer: Sometimes three, sometimes five, sometimes seven on daily basis. When they kill, they would go to UNTH and sell the corpse.
Question: Have you ever accompanied them to take corpse to UNTH?
Answer: I have witnessed it. They told me and one Mr Charles to carry a corpse and put in Hilux. We did. They handcuffed the two of us and took us to UNTH. That is where I confirmed the business they were doing there.
Question: Did you see them giving money to the SARS people
Answer: No, but with the experience, it is the business they are doing because even the people they kill, when their people come to claim their corpse, they would say it is government property.
In Anambra, the allegation of body sales was also reechoed by a survivor of Akwuzu SARS. His identity will also not be revealed.
He said: “In respect to the human part, what is driving that narrative is that there are so many people who in the course of their stay in the cell, die. And we have done the job of what you might call ‘ambulance,’ when you take away the ‘fallen heroes.’
“Sometimes the people that are being dropped, one does not notice any signs of burial, or whether they go to throw them away. And in most occasions, we witnessed the visits of politicians around the environment. When these politicians visit the place, one becomes worried what truly is their mission. Some of them come there almost on weekly basis. So, with the level of deaths that happened in the cell and the killings, and the level of visitations that happens there in terms of politicians visitations, it becomes a line of thought,” he said.
This report, the third in a series, is from a fact-finding mission of the Action Group on Free Civic Space to the South-East on police brutality. The full report is titled #EndSARS: Police Brutality and Shrinking Civic Space, published by Spaces for Change, on behalf of the Action Group.
