Oyo EndSARS panel attends to 163 petitions as sitting ends –chairperson

The Oyo State Judicial Panel of Enquiry, set up in the aftermath of the EndSARS protests, to hear petitions of police brutality and related extrajudicial killings held its final public sitting on Tuesday.

Inaugurated on 10 Nov. 2020, the chairperson of the 11-member panel, Justice Badejoko Adeniji, (rtd), at its final sitting held at the House of Chiefs, State Secretariat, Ibadan, stated that the panel attended to a total of 163 petitions.

She noted that the panel received and investigated petitions on police related abuses, evaluated evidences presented by petitioners, looked at their surrounding circumstances and validity of complaints.

The panel’s recommendations for compensations, remedial measures and restitution for victims and petitioners would be handed over to the state government, in due course, she added.

At the final sitting, a petitioner, Mrs Oseni Fatiat, in a case against one Insp. Clement Olarenwaju and the IGP, demanded N10million as compensation for being brutalized by men of the Nigeria police Force.

Oseni recounted that on June 28, 2018 the Police stormed her residence alleging that a vehicle parked in front of her house was stolen.

Following the incident, she claimed she was whisked away and kept in police custody both at Dugbe, Ibadan, and Ikeja, Lagos, for 15 days, during which she was hit with the butt of a gun on her knee and chest to confess to an allegation of robbery, which she knew nothing about.

As the police were not present at the panel’s sitting to put up its defence, the Adeniji-led panel said it would forward its recommendations for remedial measures to the state government for consideration.

Also considered at Tuesday’s final sitting was the case between one Ajayi Opeyemi and the Nigeria Police, Akanran, in Ona-Ara local government area, in respect of a parcel of land near the Akanran police station allegedly acquired by the police.

The panel later visited the Akanran police station, to inspect the disputed parcel of land.

At the police station, the panel met with the chairman of Ona-Ara local government, Mr Musibau Sanusi, who promised to intervene and resolve the matter amicably between Opeyemi and the police authority.