#EndSARS: Lagos Judicial Panel Summons Three Police Officers, Strikes Out One Petition

The Lagos State Judicial Panel on the Restitution for Victims of SARS-related abuses and other matters has summoned the Commissioner of Police in charge of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport Command, the DPO, Olosan Police Station and one of his officers simply identified as Oosa.

The panel summoned the three officers in connection with two different petitions.

The Commissioner of Police of the Airport was summoned in connection with a case filed by a petitioner, Chukwuma Henry who alleged that he was shot in the abdomen by a police officer he identified as Sergeant Emmanuel Agambi.

The incident allegedly occurred in Jan. 2013 around the public car park at the airport.

The police counsel, Cyril Ejiofor asked the panel to summon the police commissioner to enable him produce the member of his staff, Agambi who allegedly fired the shot. He is to appear before the panel at the next adjourned date, April 23rd.

The petitioner on his part is demanding compensation for the injuries he claimed he suffered as a result of the shooting. He says he requires a colostomy operation which will cost over N2m.

In another case, the panel summoned the DPO of Olosan police station and one of his officers who is said to go by the alias ‘Oosa’. Both men are to appear before the panel on May 4 to relate what they know about the petition filed by the family of late Adeshina Adeosun against the Nigerian Police.

Adeosun was allegedly shot by officers of the Nigerian Police Force, Olosan Division on October 20, 2020.

The family wants the panel to help them get his body from the police. They also asked the panel to compensate them for the loss.

In the only decision delivered at the sitting, the Chairman of the panel, Justice Doris Okuwobi struck out a petition involving Mrs Taiwo Idehen and her two sons against the Nigeria Police Force.

The 60-year-old petitioner had alleged that the police acting on the instigation of a family member arrested her sons after claiming that they conspired to kill their father, a former police officer, Jospeh Idehen.

She said she was lured to the police station following the arrest of her sons and after she got there, she was stripped naked and assaulted. She asked the panel to help her secure justice and compensation for the alleged police brutality.

Her sons also requested for justice and compensation for their alleged illegal arrest detention and prosecution. The panel had subsequently consolidated all three petitions.

In its decision on the consolidated petitions today, the panel held that the subject matter of the petitions before it is the same with one pending before the courts. Justice Okuwobi struck out the petitions on the grounds that the matter is pending before a court of competent jurisdiction, is subjudice and amounts to an abuse of court of process.