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Banker Shot During Cousin's Funeral By Police. by farydah: 8:00am On Oct 04, 2015 |
HOME / NEWS / HOW GUN SHOT SALUTE
GOT BANKER PARALYSED
How Gun Shot Salute Got
Banker Paralysed
By Reuben Buhari
— Oct 3, 2015 5:01 am | Leave a comment
When Mr Haruna Gajere set out to attain the
burial of his cousin in the village, he never
thought he will return in a wheelchair. Two
years later after the burial, Gajere,
paralyzed from the chest down,
consequence of a 21-gun salute that ended
tragically, has been moving from hospital to
hospital while toying with the idea of suicide
writes Reuben Buhari.
As a 33-year-old happily-married banker of
many years, Mr Haruna Gajere, with a
beautiful wife and two children, like every
other human out there had robust plans for
the future; plans that include concluding a
rewarding career within the banking halls
and retiring peacefully into farming later in
life.
However, an unjustifiable twist of fate in the
form of a freak accident has now confined
Gajere to a wheelchair for the last two years.
His fault was to be by the graveside of his
deceased cousin, a mobile policeman who
was being saluted with the traditional 21-
gun salute. After the policemen were
through discharging their guns, Gajere,
some few meters away from the grave side,
was found lying on the ground in a pool of
his own blood, arising from the bullets of
one of the policemen.
It started on 27 January, 2013 when Gajere
who was then working with a new
generation bank in Kaduna, decided to go
home to the village for the burial of a cousin
– a mobile policeman who had died in Lagos.
Before that faithful day, Gajere was actively
involved in making plans to accord his
deceased cousin a befitting burial, and on
the date of the burial, he finally made his
way to Yarbung village in Kachia local
government of Kaduna state. Devoid of any
clairvoyance hint of a life changing incidents
that awaits him, Gajere left for the village
early on a Saturday morning. However, the
burial couldn’t take place that Saturday
because the police contingent that
accompanied the corpse arrived in the
village very late. So the burial was shifted to
Sunday morning.
On Sunday morning, the burial proper
commenced. The shoes, the cap and the belt
of the deceased were laid on the coffin and
the policemen who were to give the final
customary salute to a fallen comrade in the
form of a 21-gun salute took position some
meters away from the freshly-dug grave
that was crowded with sympathizers – both
relatives and those who were there out of
curiosity.
The policemen then raised their guns and
with the muzzle of their AK 47s pointing into
the sky, released some volleys of bullets
into the sky. However, one of them had a
malfunction. His gun jammed and it didn’t
discharge. With a bewildered look on his
face, he lowered the gun and kept trying to
rectify it. Against standard precautionary
measure adopted by most security men
with arms, he didn’t put his gun on safety
mode. Gajere, meanwhile was some meters
away helping those mixing the cement that
would be used in plastering the grave after
the coffin had been lowered into the hole.
He was just in the process of adding water
to the already mixed cement and graveled
when his world exploded.
The policeman with the jammed gun was
still lowering his gun and trying to fix it
when the gun started emitting bullets into
the crowd. Gajere while still bending at the
waist to pour the water was shot in the
shoulder. The bullet went straight through
his chest, missing his heart by inches and
hit his thoracic spine. Unknown to him,
three of the 12 vertebrae that made up the
thoracic spine got damaged immediately.
Three other people around the grave also
got shot. One had a bullet through his leg
while another got a bullet in the back.
Luckily for them, theirs weren’t life
threatening.
He was rushed to Ahmadu Bello University
teaching hospital Shika in Zaria where MRI
and CT scan done on him confirmed that
apart from the spinal cord injury, he also
had three fractured ribs. The bullet stayed
there for nine days before he finally had the
first spinal cord decompression surgery.
After that, he stayed in the hospital for five
months and his hope that he could stand
and walk again got dashed when he
couldn’t. He became paralysed from the
chest to his legs feeling no sensation when
touched. He couldn’t excrete on his own and
started passing urine with the help of a
catheter. A full bustling 33 year-old reduced
to a wheel chair when he temporarily left
the hospital. The spiraling effect of the
incident condemned his 30 year-old wife –
Peace Gajere to a lifelong duty of a
caregiver, who also has to source for the
house’s sustenance.
Haruna, who recently wrote a letter to the
chairman of the National Human Right
Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu,
asking for his intervention on the issue,
explained that the policeman who fired the
shot and the police command refused to
come to his aide all through the two years
and eight months that he has been sourcing
for medical help to his condition.
“My condition is so critical and likely to
deteriorate unless urgent steps are taken for
my treatment by experts abroad and it
appears that the police that caused my
injury is not willing or ready to act
immediately or at all. This is because even
when I met with the Assistant
Commissioner of Police (ACP) upon my
discharge from the hospital, the ACP told
me that the police is not responsible for the
act, that the police man who shot me acted
on his own personal capacity as an
individual and as such he should be
responsible for my ordeal, despite the fact
that he was on an official duty. The most
painful and annoying aspect of all was when
the legal head (a woman) of the Kaduna
Police High Command insisted on talking to
me by proxy, saying there was no point
seeing them. She was referring to her and
the ACP. This i objected to and insisted on
seeing the person I was talking to, instead of
through the phone.”
Gajere explained that he want the police to
help him because life has become financially
and emotionally difficult for him having
spent about N3,350,000 on medication
since the beginning of the 32 months that
he has been down.
“At the moment, I find life difficult. I pay for
virtually everything in my life, including
urinating, defecating and sleeping. This is
because it involves the use of drugs to aid
the process and catheter for depositing of
urine. I am also on physiotherapy exercise
that cost N50,000 per sessions. This i do 20
sessions per months to keep my body
system active.
He added that he has toyed with the idea of
suicide on several occasions, but has held
back by the comforting thought of his wife
and his two children – aged four and two
respectively. He is however asking the
police to help sponsor his treatment to a
specialist German hospital for corrective
spinal cord surgery and physical
rehabilitation at a cost of 120,000 Euro. This
includes cost of surgery, transportation and
hotel bills, rehabilitation fee for therapy and
other logistics.
LEADERSHIP weekend however, in deciding
to find out whether live bullets are used
during a 21-gun salutes, spoke to some
persons within the police and military
formations. A reliable source within the
military said, “Usually rubber bullets or
blanks are used. However, it is not unheard
of for live bullets to be used. It is however
rare. The police source who also spoke said,
the police used live bullets, but the guns are
pointed up to avoid any accidents.
However, for now Haruna Gajere, while
battling to get justice from those concerned,
continues to lived each day as it comes.
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Re: Banker Shot During Cousin's Funeral By Police. by farydah: 8:01am On Oct 04, 2015 |
leadership.ng/news/464940/how-gun-shot-salute-got-banker-paralysed |
Re: Banker Shot During Cousin's Funeral By Police. by fromnigeria(m): 8:14am On Oct 04, 2015 |
Untrained Poliiice |
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