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Tordue Salem
Tordue Salem

If only the dead could talk, House of Representatives reporter for Vanguard newspapers, late Tordue Salem would have been the one reporting what led to his death. But the dead remains eternally mute. On the other hand, fellow journalists, his family and employers had been looking for him since October 13, this year. Sadly, it took almost a month for the riddle surrounding the disappearance of the journalist to be unravelled in part. This is because he is no longer a missing person. Reports from the Nigerian Police Force indicate his corpse has been found in a morgue in the Federal Capital, Abuja.

We commiserate with the family, employer and professional colleagues of the late journalist who got missing on his way from work that fateful day. We however found it curious that the police had to be prodded by the peaceful protests by Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the FCT council to the police headquarters, and for a resolution to be passed by both arms of the National Assembly mandating the security agencies in the country to unravel the circumstances surrounding Salem’s disappearance. He had been missing for 30 whole days.

The sad announcement by the Force Public Relations Officer, (FPRO), Mr. Frank Mba, that one Itoro Clement, a 29-year-old taxi driver was the hit-and-run driver that killed the journalist had astounded all those that have been worried about his disappearance in the last one month.  His immediate constituency at the National Assembly, the House of Representatives Press Corps, (HoRPC) had petitioned the NUJ to institute an independent enquiry to carry out an autopsy to determine the cause and date of his death.

While the country and the whole world await further investigations, we must point out a failure of due diligence on the part of the police. To have taken some institutional prompting to spur them into action is not good enough for the image of both the force and the country. It was alleged that the hit-and-run driver had knocked down the journalist and moved to some policemen at a checkpoint to tell them that he had hit someone and the police allegedly directed him to go and report himself at a police station.

This sounds very bizarre and incredible. The normal cause of action ought to have been to arrest the driver, take him to the scene and continue further investigations while remanding the suspect till he is taken to a court to either be granted bail by a judge or refused same, depending on the legal processes.

If the police had acted with dispatch, the poor journalist might have been rushed to the hospital and possibly been resuscitated or officially declared dead by a doctor.  All these post-death narrative by the police sound very disturbing in a country where the trust in the police is almost at its lowest ebb.  To have wasted almost a month to come out with the narrative to reporters does not do the Nigerian police or citizens any good.

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We are equally surprised that the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria is neither well policed nor well lit for crimes such as this to be detected immediately.  Why are there no functional CCTV cameras that could have helped in investigations in a 21st century Abuja? Who were the policemen that were derelict in their duties to just dismiss a suspect that told them he had hit a human being to go report himself to the next police station? That is more than a slap on the wrist. Mr. Salem was a citizen deserving of the full protection of the police.

While we expect the police authorities to do a more thorough job in this circumstance, we appeal to them to be more protective of citizens in ways that the lost trust in their ability to serve and protect, given the long drawn battle with the #EndSARS protesting youths can be restored. There must be a full investigation of what went wrong with the life of Mr. Salem, not just as a journalist, but as a citizen who needed to be protected . All the culprits must face justice.

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