A widow, Dorothy Nnabode Aboy, on Monday, narrated before the independent investigation panel on rights violations by the defunct SARS and other units of police set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), how her husband was killed in her presence by the police when she was pregnant.
The widow narrated how policemen shot and killed her husband while testifying in a petition, marked 2020/IIP-SARS/ABJ/81, filed by Chief Peter Ikechi and other members of Odekpe community in Anambra State, alleging death in custody, arbitrary arrest and detention, unlawful use of firearms resulting in extra-judicial killing and abuse of office.
Respondents in the petition are CSP Danjuma Ochejeh of Delta State Police Command; OC IGP-IRT, Force Headquarters, Abuja; FCT Commissioner of Police; Delta State Commissioner of Police and Inspector-General of Police.
The widow, who said she was a farmer like the deceased, informed that she and her late husband, Aboy, were in their house at Odekpe community eating on the fateful day when four men in police uniform came into their house.
According to her, they shot her husband in the stomach, adding that as of the time of the incident, she was still pregnant with the baby she carried to the investigation panel.
“It was the police people who killed my husband. We were in the house eating when the policemen came into the house and shot him.
“He was not shot on the road; he was shot in the house. He was eating when the policemen came to shoot him. I saw it when he was shot in the stomach.
“I was present when my husband was shot and he died on the spot. I was pregnant with this child I am carrying before he was killed.
“The policemen were four in number but I don’t know anyone of them,” she told the panel.
She informed further that after her husband was shot, she started shouting and calling for help, adding that villagers later came and took his body to the mortuary.
According to her, the deceased represented the Odekpe community during meetings and there was a communal clash between her community and another community, called Alor.
While being cross-examined by counsel for the police, Godwin Ijeomah, the woman informed that there was a police station at Odekpe, adding that she reported the killing of her husband to the police.
Earlier, the wife of Peter Ekwealor, who was alleged to have been killed while in police custody in Abuja, Caroline Chukwunwike, informed that it had been eight months now that she saw her husband last.
“The last time I saw my husband, they called him on the phone that they should come for settlement Awka. I was calling him in the evening but his phone was switched off.
“I went to Awkuzu junction to check if he was involved in a car accident. When others came back later, I asked about him and I was told he was taken to Abuja. They later told me that he was dead,” she told the panel.
The widow informed the panel that she had 11 children together with him, adding that, “since the death of my husband, I cannot explain how life has been with me.”
Asked by Ijeomah, when she learnt about her husband’s death, she said, “I was told on December 9, 2020, that he was dead. They took him in June and I heard he was dead in December. They didn’t tell me the circumstances leading to his death.”
When being cross-examined earlier, a cousin to the late Ekwealor, Henry Ukwujeda, informed that the remains of the deceased were laid in the mortuary of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, Abuja.
He said though he was not there when the deceased died, his cousin died in police custody through the action of CSP Danjuma Ochejeh.
