Less than two months after a police officer attached to the Ogun state Police Command shot a woman’s car dealer husband dead, the woman is concerned that she may be killed in the same way.

Opeyemi Olawale’s husband, Olawale Babalola, 36, was allegedly shot dead on July 1, by one Sunmonu Ojediran, a police inspector from the Crime Investigations Department (CID) of the Ogun state command.

Mrs Olawale has since sued the police officer, Inspector General of Police, and the Commissioners of Police in Ogun and Oyo States, seeking justice over her husband’s death.

She said the story began on May 31, when she had a stillbirth and was admitted in a hospital in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. She added that when her husband came to visit her the following day, the medical workers taking care of her gave him a list of drugs that were not available in the hospital, to go and procure.

“He volunteered to purchase the drugs outside the hospital and that was the last day I heard or saw him alive,” she said in a sworn affidavit.

For days, frantic efforts to know his whereabouts were unfruitful until a friend of his volunteered that the man had been killed by officers of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) Ogun State, she alleged in her affidavit.

According to her, the man said the deceased was shot dead during an argument that ensued between him and police officers who brought an armed robbery suspect from Ogun State to Ibadan over an allegation of receiving stolen vehicles.

She further alleged that, unknown to her husband, the police asked the suspect to ask her husband if he was interested in buying a vehicle for his business.

“On arrival at the agreed area at the Nigerian Breweries Area of Ibadan, my husband was arrested and upon argument that ensued, my husband was shot by the 3rd respondent (Mr Ojediran) and died as a result of the gunshot,” she said.

Speaking through her lawyer, Abiola Olagunju, in Ibadan, yesterday, Mrs Olawale, alleged that since the killing and her insistence on seeking justice, she has been receiving strange messages from anonymous persons believed to have links with Mr Ojediran, who threatened to deal with her if she refuses to back down from seeking justice.

Apart from the threat messages, the complainant alleged that the police have ransacked her home different times, and she was arrested by the Oyo State SARS last week, for onward transmission to Eleweran, Ogun State office of SARS.

Court demands

In a suit filed in the name of David Olawale, a four-year-old boy and the only surviving child she had with her late husband, Mrs Olawale is praying the court to declare the shooting and killing of her husband without justification, as a gross violation of the constitution. She equally prayed the court to restrain the defendants from further harassing, victimizing, disturbing, arresting, detaining or subjecting her to any form of indignity, inhuman or degrading treatment, even as he asked for the release of the corpse of her husband for burial. As compensation, she is demanding N100 million, for the alleged wrongful killing. Mr Olagunju, her lawyer, is worried about the rising cases of extra-judicial killing by officers of the Nigeria Police. “I do not know whether the man was truly involved in armed robbery or not. But the law does not permit anyone to take another man’s life unjustifiably. The policeman only killed the man over (a) mere argument.”

When contacted by phone yesterday, Olabisi Okuwobi, Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Oyo State command, said she has not been briefed about the case, adding that her Ogun State counterpart was in a better position to respond. Several calls to Muyiwa Adejobi, the Ogun State PPRO, however, did not go through.

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