Twenty-five-year-old, Bukola Erinfolami is yet to get over her grief, weeks after the brutal murder of her 27-year-old husband, Adewale Erinfolami, by policemen allegedly engaged by a land-owning family to prosecute a land dispute. The mother of three girls; a six-year-old and two-year-old twins, tried hard to hold back tears as she narrated how her husband was felled in his prime by the bullets of some rampaging mobile policemen. Bukola, with a heavy heart and teary eyes, said on the day her husband was killed, he bade her farewell, embraced his children in turn and said he was going to work.
“I never had any inkling of a bad omen awaiting my husband as he left home, characteristically ebullient and full of life. He even promised to buy the children some things on his way back. Towards evening time, he called to inform me that he might be coming back a little late as he had more work to do; he was an artisan, a welder. It was about a few hours later that someone rushed to call me that my husband had been shot and that he was dead,” Bukola recalled, amid tears.
She said she raced to the place almost half nude, with my three children on my trail to ascertain the veracity of the bad news, adding that “but, I was unable to see his corpse. Confused, I ran round the vicinity of the site of the incident to see if he was being hidden somewhere in the bush, but all I could see was a pool of blood without my husband.” The widow said when she pressed to know what had happened to his remains if indeed, he was dead, two of his friends who came to break the sad news informed her that his remains had been taken to a mortuary in Ikorodu area of Lagos.
“When I asked who took him there, they said it was the police at Odongunyan Police Station in Ikorodu. Without much ado, I rushed to the police station to seek clarification on what happened to my husband to warrant his death. The police would not attend to me. Rather, they treated me with disdain. They told me casually as if he was a criminal, that the matter had been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) in Panti, Lagos.
“When I requested to see the corpse of my husband at the General Hospital in Ikorodu, they told me bluntly that I could not see him and that only the police could give such permission. Again, I went back to the police station in Ikorodu to get their permission, but they insisted I could not see him. At this point, I became more confused and angry as I could not fathom any reason the police would not oblige me such a little courtesy, at least if not for me but for the sake of my kids. “I am bereaved and mourning and I believe I deserve to know what really happened to my husband,” Bukola recounted.
She noted that to the best of her knowledge, her late husband was not at loggerheads with anyone and did not belong to any cult group either, to warrant his being mowed down by the police in the course of his legitimate work. Asked if she had any suspicion of who killed Adewale or what could have caused her husband’s death, she said she was told by eye-witnesses at the scene of the tragedy that mobile policemen from MOPOL 4 Unit, based in Ibadan, Oyo State were responsible for her husband’s death.
According to her, the mobile policemen had overrun the land where the late Adewale works, shooting sporadically, and apparently on the prompting of one of the feuding parties to the sprawling piece of land, he was shot dead by one of the riot policemen.
The Police Angle
Meanwhile, the homicide section of the CID Panti, Lagos, confirmed the shooting and death of Adewale Erinfolami, when contacted. It also confirmed that one Inspector Idris Sikiru of Mopol 4 Unit was arrested, among other suspects in the matter, and that they were undergoing investigation. It informed further that the matter had been transferred to the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Abuja. Also, when contacted, the homicide section of the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) Abuja, through a top police officer (name withheld), confirmed that the FCID was indeed, handling the murder case. The source disclosed that several arrests had been made concerning the case and that more invitations were being extended to suspected individuals. New National Star also gathered that the office of the Police Service Commission in Abuja had shown interest in the matter.
According to the source, information obtained from the Musliu Smith-led commission, the agency is concerned about the rather unbecoming attitude of police officers, turning themselves to willing tools in the hands of land grabbers, to the extent of shooting and killing people without recourse to the rules of engagement, revealing that “we have a petition on the matter before us. It is dated 19th March, 2021.”
He stated that without prejudice to the ongoing investigations by the homicide department of the FCID, the commission might want to use this particular matter as an avenue to announce to all its employees that it can no longer be business as usual for sloppy policemen, and that any police officer or man found wanting in this, shall be fully disciplined. “The police high command will not fold its hands and watch its image being continually soiled by some unscrupulous officers,” the PSC top shot offered.
The Land Dispute
Sources also revealed that the FCID had opened full investigation into the lingering land imbroglio between two parties in Ikorodu as a lead to the cause of the death of Adewale Erinfolami. Decades earlier, the Nigerian External Telecommunications (NET), acting on the authority of then governor-general of the country, acquired parcels of land measuring 150.56 acres along the IkoroduItamaga Road, in the Ikorodu division, under the defunct Western Nigeria for public purposes and in particular for telecommunications development.
The said parcels of land were acquired from three families, namely, Loti Sanmolu Royal family, Aro Efolu/Otuseko/Ajisebiarameka family and Regun Chieftaincy Family. As at the time of the acquisition, compensations were duly paid to each family according to their claim of ownership, without rancour. However, when the operations of NITEL moved to Abuja, the Federal Government returned the land to the original families as of status quo. However, sources confirmed that trouble began when only one of the three families claimed outright ownership of the parcels of land, thus leading to clashes with the two other families.
Bukola’s Agony
Meanwhile, Bukola Erinfolami, still in agony, lamented the consequences of the gruesome murder of her husband. “They have made me a widow at noon. They have denied me the fruit of my matrimony and they have made my children fatherless as toddlers. He told me he was going to work to fend for me and the three children (aged two and six as the two-year-olds are a set of twins) and I believed him because he had been a responsible father who lived up to his billing as a husband. “A week before the fateful incident, he had promised to give me some money to boost my phone recharge card business as he was expecting some money; all that has vanished into the thin air following his untimely death. Now, where do I go from here?” she lamented. Even in her state of melancholy, Bukola made a passionate appeal to the police to grant her the honour of seeing the remains of her husband and that the government should help her get justice by bringing the killers of her husband to justice.