TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
A widow, Kafayat Ibitoye, has narrated to the Osun Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Police Brutality, Human Rights Violations and Related Extra Judicial Killings, how the police made her a bread hawker after they killed her husband in 2017.
Ibitoye said on Friday that the killing of her husband had made life unbearable for her and her three children.
She explained that she had to relocate to Lagos to find a means of surviving with her children, which basically entailed hawking bread on the streets of Lagos.
The petitioner said her husband was only 34 years old as at April 25, 2017 when some policemen shot him dead.
According to her, the deceased and his elder brother, Teslim Ibitoye, had visited their sick cousin, Nureni Ibitoye, at Erin-Osun, Osun State, before some Policemen stormed the house and shot him.
She lamented that the killing had impoverished the family with the three children dropping out of the private school they were attending.
“Initially, I was made to believe that my husband was being treated at the State Specialist Hospital, Asubiaro, Osogbo, after receiving the gunshots but I was later told the truth that my husband had died,” she said.
She added that she had to live with the trauma of not just her husband’s death, but also the withholding of his corpse.
“If my children are fatherless, they at least deserve to know where their father has been buried. I am appealing to the government to help me with financial compensation to ameliorate the suffering that the death of my husband has caused. I am pleading for a compensation of N50 million,” she added.
Commenting on the state of the release of the corpse to the family, Ibitoye said the family would hopefully secure the release on Friday, following a formal note to the management of the hospital by the Nigerian Police Force.
Recall that the family had reported to the panel last Friday, that the hospital authorities had refused to release the corpse of the late Akeem Ibitoye despite the orders of the panel that the corpse be released to the family, on the pretense that there was no written statement to that effect from the Police that deposited the corpse.
But Ibitoye noted that the family was hopeful of conducting the burial of the late Akeem Ibitoye immediately the corpse is released, according to Islamic rites.
