When 60-year-old Kudirat Adebayo lost her job as a cook in Magodo area of Lagos in January 2017, she realised that the easiest option open to her was to become a roadside food vendor.
After all, she had children to fend for.
The Ogun State indigene decided that frying Ojojo (a water yam snack) was the easiest way out of the hunger that her family faced. Soon, schoolchildren and residents of her Mushin neighbourhood in Lagos flocked to her stand.
But she could not have imagined that less than four months down the line, she was going to meet a gruesome fate at the same stand where she had been servicing passing customers.
Saturday PUNCH learnt from one of her children, Olorunloye Adebayo, that on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, Kudirat was tired and did want to go out to her stand to fry her snacks at the Onipanu Toll Gate area of Mushin. But she needed money to feed her children.
Olorunloye told our correspondent, “I don’t live with her. Where she lived with my younger siblings is just few metres to the railway station. I went to her place while coming back from work on Tuesday as I usually did. I was hungry and just needed to grab something to eat.
“I was surprised that when I got there, she had just started setting up around 3pm. She said she did not start on time because school pupils who usually patronised her were on holiday. Normally, she started frying around midday.
“She told me that apart from this, she was very tired but had to force herself to come out because she had no money to take care of the home. I told her that I was broke as well that I even planned to get a soft loan from her.
“She told me that my junior brother had just made Amala and that I should go in and eat that.”
Olorunloye left his mother’s house shortly after eating and promised to check in on her again later that day.
But that would be the last time he would see her alive.
Olorunloye had a meeting in the neighbourhood. He was in the meeting two hours after he saw his mother when he heard a gunshot.
He did not think of it as anything out of the ordinary.
“A neighbourhood security guy in our gathering said that a ‘Yahoo’ boy in the area was celebrating his birthday and that the gunshot must have been part of the celebration. He said we should not panic so we continued the meeting,” he said.
But 25 minutes after Olorunloye heard that gunshot, he received a call that nearly drove him mad.
The caller told him that his mother had just been shot dead.
“I could not have imagined that the gunshot I heard 25 minutes earlier that call had anything to do with my mother,” he said.
The young man rushed to the scene only to be told that angry youths in the neighbourhood had arranged a vehicle to take his mother’s body to the Olosan Police Station, Mushin.
According to him, the youths even threatened to destroy the station.
Olorunloye said he met his mother’s sister at the station who was also selling food just a short distance from where Kudirat was shot dead.
He saw his mother’s body in the vehicle in which it was conveyed to the station and broke down.
A single bullet had hit her in the forehead.
When he gathered himself together, the story he was told further angered him.
He said, “The boys around my mother’s house who witnessed the shooting said that they saw those policemen driving recklessly on their motorcycle (the kind provided to the police by the Lagos State Government for patrol of the metro area).
“The two policemen on the motorcycle were well known to youths in the neighbourhood. The rider is called Prince while the passenger who did the shooting is called Chiboy. He is notorious for hunting ‘Yahoo boys’. He arrests and collects money from them before releasing them.
“The policemen were chasing the young man from Ogunmokun, few streets away. He was running in zig-zag to avoid being shot. They were shooting at him all the same. An okada rider who was also hit in the leg by one of the bullets survived. He was rushed to the Isolo General Hospital, where the bullet was removed.”
But at the police station, matter soon took a different turn.
The family and angry residents who had taken the corpse to the Olosan Police Station were told that the policemen could not have shot the deceased as “the bullets the policemen left the station with were all accounted for” by the time they got back.
Then, the police reportedly suggested that she might have been shot by area boys in the neighbourhood.
Olorunloye said, “The divisional police officer of the station said that Chiboy signed no gun out of the station. They said he was only holding a pistol. We said okay, where is the pistol he used?
“At the end of the day, the DPO said only after they retrieved the bullet in her head could anybody confirm who shot her.
“Everybody said there was no fight in the neighbourhood and that their men were the ones chasing someone. Yet, the police insisted that the shooting must have been done by area boys.
“We heard they ran away as soon as they noticed someone was hit by their bullets. Chiboy and Prince had been told to stay away by their colleagues.”
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the DPO of Olosan gave his men N50,000 to pay at the Military Hospital mortuary in Yaba, where the body of the deceased was deposited but his men allegedly paid only N5,000 there.
Olorunloye said when he got to the mortuary, he was told he had to pay N40,000.
“I told the DPO how much I would need to pay and he was shocked. He said he would need to find out what happened because he actually gave his men N50,000,” he said.
The family was told that the body won’t get an autopsy until after three weeks because of the scarcity of pathologists.
It was learnt that the only pathologist available has many works on this hands and only comes around once in a while.
It is after the autopsy that the bullet would be taken to a lab to determine if it is from a police gun or from an area boy.
The family is currently being assisted by a member of House of Representatives from Mushin, Mr. Kako Are, and the Lagos State Commissioner for Special Duties and Intergovernmental Relations, Mr. Oluseye Oladejo, to ensure a speedy autopsy.
Olorunloye said for each day the body of his mother would be in the mortuary, it is racking up a bill that the family does not have.
But his most important concern is the care of his siblings.
He said, “The Lagos State Police Command must find the man who took my mother’s life, wherever his colleagues are hiding him. My mother’s blood is crying for justice.
“The police have invited poverty and hunger into the lives of my younger ones because my mother was always struggling to take care of them. That bullet did not just kill my mother, it also turned our lives, especially that of my young ones, upside down.
“I don’t know what to do with them now. I don’t have money to take care of them. As old as I am, when things became very hard, my mother still gave me money to just help me out.”
Saturday PUNCH got across to the spokesperson for the Lagos State Police Command, Olarinde Famous-Cole, but he said the policemen in question were on an official duty at the time of the incident.
He siad, “I cannot say much at this point because investigation is still ongoing on the case. But the men were on an official assignment. The men the policemen were chasing threw the bag they were carrying away and fled. The policemen tried to make sure they stopped the suspects.
“We are still investigating what led to the shooting of the woman and as soon as we have more facts, we will make it available.”
This is not the first time the police have been accused of hunting or brutalising suspected internet fraudsters, otherwise called ‘Yahoo boys’. Just a few days ago, a young man was killed by the police in Ile-Ife under the guise that he was an internet fraudster.
Source
After all, she had children to fend for.
The Ogun State indigene decided that frying Ojojo (a water yam snack) was the easiest way out of the hunger that her family faced. Soon, schoolchildren and residents of her Mushin neighbourhood in Lagos flocked to her stand.
But she could not have imagined that less than four months down the line, she was going to meet a gruesome fate at the same stand where she had been servicing passing customers.
Saturday PUNCH learnt from one of her children, Olorunloye Adebayo, that on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, Kudirat was tired and did want to go out to her stand to fry her snacks at the Onipanu Toll Gate area of Mushin. But she needed money to feed her children.
Olorunloye told our correspondent, “I don’t live with her. Where she lived with my younger siblings is just few metres to the railway station. I went to her place while coming back from work on Tuesday as I usually did. I was hungry and just needed to grab something to eat.
“I was surprised that when I got there, she had just started setting up around 3pm. She said she did not start on time because school pupils who usually patronised her were on holiday. Normally, she started frying around midday.
“She told me that apart from this, she was very tired but had to force herself to come out because she had no money to take care of the home. I told her that I was broke as well that I even planned to get a soft loan from her.
“She told me that my junior brother had just made Amala and that I should go in and eat that.”
Olorunloye left his mother’s house shortly after eating and promised to check in on her again later that day.
But that would be the last time he would see her alive.
Olorunloye had a meeting in the neighbourhood. He was in the meeting two hours after he saw his mother when he heard a gunshot.
He did not think of it as anything out of the ordinary.
“A neighbourhood security guy in our gathering said that a ‘Yahoo’ boy in the area was celebrating his birthday and that the gunshot must have been part of the celebration. He said we should not panic so we continued the meeting,” he said.
But 25 minutes after Olorunloye heard that gunshot, he received a call that nearly drove him mad.
The caller told him that his mother had just been shot dead.
“I could not have imagined that the gunshot I heard 25 minutes earlier that call had anything to do with my mother,” he said.
The young man rushed to the scene only to be told that angry youths in the neighbourhood had arranged a vehicle to take his mother’s body to the Olosan Police Station, Mushin.
According to him, the youths even threatened to destroy the station.
Olorunloye said he met his mother’s sister at the station who was also selling food just a short distance from where Kudirat was shot dead.
He saw his mother’s body in the vehicle in which it was conveyed to the station and broke down.
A single bullet had hit her in the forehead.
When he gathered himself together, the story he was told further angered him.
He said, “The boys around my mother’s house who witnessed the shooting said that they saw those policemen driving recklessly on their motorcycle (the kind provided to the police by the Lagos State Government for patrol of the metro area).
“The two policemen on the motorcycle were well known to youths in the neighbourhood. The rider is called Prince while the passenger who did the shooting is called Chiboy. He is notorious for hunting ‘Yahoo boys’. He arrests and collects money from them before releasing them.
“The policemen were chasing the young man from Ogunmokun, few streets away. He was running in zig-zag to avoid being shot. They were shooting at him all the same. An okada rider who was also hit in the leg by one of the bullets survived. He was rushed to the Isolo General Hospital, where the bullet was removed.”
But at the police station, matter soon took a different turn.
The family and angry residents who had taken the corpse to the Olosan Police Station were told that the policemen could not have shot the deceased as “the bullets the policemen left the station with were all accounted for” by the time they got back.
Then, the police reportedly suggested that she might have been shot by area boys in the neighbourhood.
Olorunloye said, “The divisional police officer of the station said that Chiboy signed no gun out of the station. They said he was only holding a pistol. We said okay, where is the pistol he used?
“At the end of the day, the DPO said only after they retrieved the bullet in her head could anybody confirm who shot her.
“Everybody said there was no fight in the neighbourhood and that their men were the ones chasing someone. Yet, the police insisted that the shooting must have been done by area boys.
“We heard they ran away as soon as they noticed someone was hit by their bullets. Chiboy and Prince had been told to stay away by their colleagues.”
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the DPO of Olosan gave his men N50,000 to pay at the Military Hospital mortuary in Yaba, where the body of the deceased was deposited but his men allegedly paid only N5,000 there.
Olorunloye said when he got to the mortuary, he was told he had to pay N40,000.
“I told the DPO how much I would need to pay and he was shocked. He said he would need to find out what happened because he actually gave his men N50,000,” he said.
The family was told that the body won’t get an autopsy until after three weeks because of the scarcity of pathologists.
It was learnt that the only pathologist available has many works on this hands and only comes around once in a while.
It is after the autopsy that the bullet would be taken to a lab to determine if it is from a police gun or from an area boy.
The family is currently being assisted by a member of House of Representatives from Mushin, Mr. Kako Are, and the Lagos State Commissioner for Special Duties and Intergovernmental Relations, Mr. Oluseye Oladejo, to ensure a speedy autopsy.
Olorunloye said for each day the body of his mother would be in the mortuary, it is racking up a bill that the family does not have.
But his most important concern is the care of his siblings.
He said, “The Lagos State Police Command must find the man who took my mother’s life, wherever his colleagues are hiding him. My mother’s blood is crying for justice.
“The police have invited poverty and hunger into the lives of my younger ones because my mother was always struggling to take care of them. That bullet did not just kill my mother, it also turned our lives, especially that of my young ones, upside down.
“I don’t know what to do with them now. I don’t have money to take care of them. As old as I am, when things became very hard, my mother still gave me money to just help me out.”
Saturday PUNCH got across to the spokesperson for the Lagos State Police Command, Olarinde Famous-Cole, but he said the policemen in question were on an official duty at the time of the incident.
He siad, “I cannot say much at this point because investigation is still ongoing on the case. But the men were on an official assignment. The men the policemen were chasing threw the bag they were carrying away and fled. The policemen tried to make sure they stopped the suspects.
“We are still investigating what led to the shooting of the woman and as soon as we have more facts, we will make it available.”
This is not the first time the police have been accused of hunting or brutalising suspected internet fraudsters, otherwise called ‘Yahoo boys’. Just a few days ago, a young man was killed by the police in Ile-Ife under the guise that he was an internet fraudster.
Source
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