Osun Panel of Inquiry: Petitioner demands N50million compensation

…Says husband’s death has made life unbearable

Abimbola Abatta, Osogbo

A petitioner, Kafayat Ibitoye, on Friday, told the Osun Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Police Brutality, Human Rights Violations and Related Extra-Judicial Killings, 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 survival, which basically entailed hawking bread on the streets of Lagos.

Ibitoye, who approached the panel to seek justice for the killing of her husband who was only 34 years old at the time of the incident, said the killing had impoverished the family with the three children dropping out of the private school they were attending.

Narrating her ordeal, Ibitoye said her late husband was shot by the police on 25th April 2017 when he and his elder brother, Teslim Ibitoye, went to visit their sick cousin, Nureni Ibitoye, at Erin-Osun.

She said she was initially made to believe that her husband was being treated at the State Specialist Hospital, Asubiaro, Osogbo but was later told the truth that her husband had died.

She said she has had to live with the trauma of not just her husband’s death, but also the withholding of his corpse. According to her: “if my children are fatherless, they at least deserve to know where their father has been buried”.

She said the incident had wreaked havoc not only on her immediate family but also on the extended family, as no one had been able to sustain the deceased’s paint-making business, which was a major source of income for the family.

“I am appealing to the government to help me with financial compensation to ameliorate the suffering that the death my husband has caused. I am pleading for 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 pretence that there was no written statement to that effect from the Police that deposited the corpse.

But Ibitoye stated that the family was hopeful to conduct the burial of the late Akeem Ibitoye immediately after the corpse is released according to Islamic rites.