Residents of Lajolo community in Ilorin East Local Government Area of Kwara State have accused the Police of extrajudicial killing of two teenagers while carrying out an operation in the community on Saturday, January 29, 2022.
The victims, Jamiu Fatai and Shaobana Abdulrasheed, both 18 year old, were natives of Lajolo community, a student-populated area, which is close to Kwara State Polytechnic.
The Mogaji ( community head) Isa Alao, while speaking to our reporter, said the activities of security operatives were becoming worrisome, saying that different security outfits in the guise of fighting crimes and criminalities often visited the community at intervals to make arrests.
They would release the suspects mostly students, after allegedly collecting money.
According to him, “The activities of the security agencies in this area have become worrisome in recent times. They have turned crime fighting into a weekly business venture, where people are arrested at random and released after collecting huge sums as bail,” he said.
Talking about Saturday incidents, the Mogaji said the community started hearing sporadic gunshots at about 6:00am, causing pandemonium.
He said he was later informed that it was the men of the Nigeria Police that stormed the community in an 18-seater Hummer bus gestapo style, breaking down doors of students and arresting seven of them.
He said Jamiu was recording the melee with his mobile phone in front of his house before he was shot in the shoulder and as he turned to run for his life, he was shot at the back.
Jamiu, a J SS 3 student who is also a carpenter apprentice, later died at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital where he was rushed to, but another person Shaobana Abdulrasheed was taken away after being shot by the operatives.
The Mogaji wondered why the security agencies found it difficult to inform the community head when such operations would be carried out, knowing full well that traditional and community heads knew the details of virtually every residents of their various communities.
“If any kind of operations is to be carried out, we believe the Police should inform the community heads, who actually know the area and can be of immense help to security agencies in fighting crime,”.
“The only reason I can say that made them not inform the community of the operation is because it is illegal job,” he concluded.
In his own account, a distraught family member of the victim Rasheed Imam, who claimed to be the elder brother of Jamiu, told our reporter that security operatives were in the community last week to arrest some students for crimes that were not known.
“They always come here every weekend to make arrests, but after two days, the students will resurface in the community, claiming to have paid huge sums of money to secure their release,” he said.
He also revealed that a student of the Kwara Polytechnic was shot in the arm and he was in the hospital receiving treatment.
Imam called on the government to fish out the killer security operatives and ensure that they were made to face the full wrath of the law.
The situation led to a chaotic situation at the entrance gate of the polytechnic, as students reportedly blocked the road in protest of the reported killings of the victim of the incident by the Police.
