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| Sunday's wife and kids |
Six months after a detective
attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Ikeja, Lagos State Police
Command, disappeared into thin air, his corpse has been found in a shallow
grave at the Ibeju Lekki area of the metropolis.
The deceased, Inspector Musa
Sunday, was abducted, tortured and later buried alive while on illegal duty at
Ibeju Lekki. Sunday and four of his men were alleged to have been drafted to guard
a land, which was under dispute by their Admin Officer (AO), at Ibeju Lekki.
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| The late Sunday |
The policemen were drafted
to the disputed land without the knowledge of the Officer in Charge of SARS
(OC) and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Fatai Owoseni.
The skeleton of the
inspector, 45, a father of four children, with their ages ranging from four,
six, eight and 12, was exhumed from a shallow grave after six months.
At least five persons,
including a traditional ruler, otherwise known as Baale have been arrested in
connection with the murder of the inspector.
A police source said: “The police
are hunting for one Mr Balogun, who led the hoodlums that attacked, abducted
and buried Sunday alive. In fact, information at police disposal says that it
was the fleeing Balogun that tied his hands before burying him alive. Balogun’s
second in command, Arokin is in police custody. He’s helping police with
investigation.”
The suspects confessed to
have buried him alive after starving him for more than five days. They also
admitted to have buried him alive on the orders of a traditional ruler, who has
interest in the land under dispute.
Sunday was abducted sometimes in November,
while guarding the disputed land, located at the Ibeju-Lekki Peninsula area of
Lagos State. The abductors made away with his rifle. The inspector, who was the
leader of the team, was on duty with four other policemen.
The abductors, alleged to be armed
to the teeth, stormed the land one fateful day in November and over powered him,
his policemen and civilian guards, patrolling the land with them.
The civilian guards were there on
the instruction of one of the men struggling for possession of the land,
identified simply as Prince, living in Ikeja.
The Prince and his opponent had
allegedly been fighting over possession of the land for months. This has led to
several people, from both factions, being killed and maimed.
A police source said that both men
had been warring, using paid thugs, until Prince decided to take police. But
rather than through the proper channel, which was contact Owoseni or OC SARS,
he went to his friend, the AO. When the AO ordered Sunday to with some
policemen to the land, he couldn’t argue with his superior.
Sunday was kidnapped when he
confronted the large number of thugs from the other faction. The thugs attacked,
injured and attempted to carry away some of Prince’s thugs.
An inside source said: “Sunday’s men
abandoned him and ran away because the thugs from the other faction were too
many. The thugs abducted Sunday and took his rifle. They injured several thugs
of Prince and also kidnapped nine men. Prince and his opponent are known for
using thugs in their quest to take possession of the large expanse of land. The
Prince came to SARS to get policemen to keep his opponent from encroaching on
the land.”
After his abduction, his phone
stopped going through. His colleagues became frantic.
Sunday’s wife and family members
besieged the Lagos State Police Command Headquarters, Ikeja, demanding to know
what had become of him.
Speaking with a journalist a few
months after the abduction of Sunday, his wife, Halimat, 27, said: “They were deployed there
to maintain peace. We learnt that hoodlums were attacking a man, so my husband
and his men moved to rescue the man. He told the other two policemen to go and
put the man in the car so he could be safe. The hoodlums pounced on my husband
and took him away. Sensing danger as the hoodlums kept increasing in number, his
men ran away. Since then, we have not heard from him.”
On the fateful day of the
incident, Halimat said that she spoke with Sunday around 4pm; he promised to
come home the following day. In the evening, his kids demanded to speak with
him, so Halimat called his line repeatedly, but it didn’t go through.
In the morning, some of his
colleagues called Halimat and told her what they heard. Since then, Halimat and
Sunday’s family members had been visiting the police headquarters in Lagos,
praying and hoping for Sunday to be alive.
She added, “Three months
after, police kept telling us that they were on the matter. We learnt they have
arrested the Prince that hired the hoodlums, but nothing has happened since
then. His children keep asking after him. His aged mother, who has high blood
pressure, has not stopped asking for his whereabouts. We don’t know what else
to tell her.”
Halimat, a housewife, noted
that since Sunday’s disappearance, she and her kids have been struggling to
survive. She’s no longer able to pay the kids’ school fees.
She said: “Nobody from the
police cared to check on us, and now we don’t have money because we don’t have
access to his ATM pin. I want my husband to come back. The children are
suffering, and I can’t carry the load alone.”
A police source said: “Sunday
was posted there with his team; they were five in number. Two of the policemen
later left, saying they were tired of the constant threat. Even soldiers that
were supposed to guard the land with them left, complaining that Prince had
never bothered to ask about their welfare.
“Sunday has been on that
land for almost three weeks when bulldozer entered the land. Prince’s faction
was overpowered. Everyone scampered for safety, but one of Prince’s thugs were
held. Sunday ran back to save him. It was in that split second that his
policemen and the man he saved drove off in a vehicle, leaving him. Sunday was
grabbed by the hoodlums, beaten and injured.”
It was gathered that the fleeing
policemen ran to Mobile Police Force (Mopol) 49, Epe. They told explained that an
inspector had been abducted, that they needed help to rescue him, but the
commander allegedly didn’t respond to their pleas.
The policemen moved to Akodo
Police Station, where a woman happened to be the Divisional Police Officer
(DPO). The DPO said she couldn’t send anyone to the area because it was a
volatile axis. They went to SARS, Ikeja to report and for five days, no action
was taken to rescue Sunday. Later, policemen started looking for Sunday, to the
extent of going to Bonny Camp, Victoria Island. The soldiers said Sunday wasn’t
with them.
When the OC SARS went to
meet Owoseni, to intimate him of the missing inspector, the number one
policeman in the state demanded to know the person that deployed Sunday and his
men on the illegal duty.
Determined to find Sunday,
sources said that the OC SARS approached the Inspector General of Police
Special Intelligence Response Team (IRT), headed by Assistant Commissioner of
Police, Mr Abba Kyari.
It was alleged that through
the efforts of the IRT operatives, Sunday’s phone was tracked and some of his alleged
killers were arrested. The suspects took police to where Sunday’s rifle was
buried.
A police source said: “Police
investigation also led to the arrest of the traditional ruler. The traditional
ruler denied knowing anything about the disappearance of Sunday. He was invited
to the police command; but rather than honour police invitation, he ran to Police
Force Headquarters, Abuja. He was told at Abuja to go back to Lagos and report
first to police invitation.”
The source continued: “Balogun,
who led the operation in which Sunday was kidnapped is on the run. But his
second in command, Arokin, has been arrested. It was Arokin that confessed that
Sunday was buried alive. He took police to the shallow grave at Ibeju Lekki.
Police brought pathologists from Lagos State University Teaching Hospital
(LASUTH), to exhume Sunday’s corpse.
“One of the pathologists,
when he saw Sunday’s skeleton, said that it looked as if he was buried with his
hands tied behind. It was at that point that Arokin confessed that Sunday was
buried alive. He disclosed that after beating and disarming Sunday, he and his
colleagues waited for five days for policemen to come for him, but nobody did. In
those five days, they didn’t give him food. He said that when police didn’t
come searching for Sunday; the traditional ruler instructed them to go and bury
the inspector alive. The traditional ruler said that nothing would happen. Sunday
was buried alive.”
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