A trader, Mr. Ndukwe Ekekwe has narrated to the Lagos judicial panel how operatives of the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) threw him down from a two-storey building, causing permanent injuries to his spinal cord.
The paraplegic disclosed this Tuesday while appearing before the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on SARS abuse and the Lekki Toll Gate incident.
He was accompanied to the panel sitting by his aged mother and was not represented by a counsel.
Ekekwe said SARS operatives arrested him at the Alaba International Market, Ojo in Lagos on February 16, 2018.
He said that the operatives refused to state his offense even when he and other traders demanded it.
According to him, the other traders also joined him in demanding that the operatives identified themselves before they could be allowed to handcuff him as they intended to.
Ekekwe said, “They immediately removed their SARS shirts, began to shoot and everyone ran away. I asked them what my crime was and they said the arrest was an order from the Inspector-General of Police (IGP).
“I was handcuffed in one hand because they noticed I wasn’t a troublemaker. On our way, they stopped at Igando and were talking. I used my other hand to reach my phone to try to call my mother, but one of them, an inspector saw me, approached me, and asked who gave me the guts to make a phone call.
“He took the phone, stepped on it, and destroyed it. He stabbed me on my wrist and back. I was hit on the head with the butt of a gun and beaten. They collected the N58,000 that was for my shop.”
He said that he was taken to the SARS office in Ikeja and tortured till daybreak.
Ekekwe said some of his torturers even threatened to shoot him.
“I was left there till evening and I did not know my crime. Till now, I do not know my crime. They kept saying that the intelligence report was on me. On the night of February 17, 2018, I was taken to my three shops where I sell phone accessories.
“The officers used a hammer to break the shop and took my goods into their vehicles and sold some of them to people in the market. They took away my goods worth N15million. I began to shout to attract attention and the commander told them to take me to the top of the two-story plaza and threw me down from the building. The officer, who threw me from that building, is Hamza Haruna. They took me back to their office in my injured state.”
Ekekwe said as his condition deteriorated in SARS custody, he was first taken to the police hospital in Ikeja from where he was taken to two other hospitals.
The trader explained to the panel that he was the breadwinner of his family before his ordeal but had become a burden to his family members in his present state.
He added that the police did not pay his medical expenses and that he had to sell his house and other property to offset the expenses.
The chairman of the Lagos judicial panel, Justice Doris Okuwobi (retd), adjourned proceedings till November 13 for the testimony of Ekekwe’s mother.
Leave a Reply