Following the death of Mr. Ugochukwu Ozuah, 36, who was said to have been shot dead five days after his wedding by policemen from the Anthony Police Station last week, Lagos residents have urged the state governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, and the Inspector General of Police Muhammed Abubakar to find the killers as well as give priority attention to the security of lives and property.
A civil servant, Akintayo Morakinyo, said: “We cannot continue to fund the police force and they cannot protect anybody.”
Another resident, Peter Eze, a computer scientists, lamented
that Lagos State was gradually becoming unsafe for the residents to live in.
“The week before this, armed robbers were just moving from
one door step to the other, robbing people and somebody is saying we have
security officials. For me, God is the one protecting me and my family. All the
money the government is spending on security is being wasted,” he
said.
Ugochukwu Ozuah, a
trained engineer from Awka North LGA of Anambra State, just wedded his wife
five days before he met his untimely death last Thursday.
The deceased’s sister, identified as Mrs. Nkechi Nonyelu,
and other relations, who wore gloomy faces, said they were too devastated to
speak to the press.
Meanwhile, the his family has described the defence put up
by the authorities of the Nigeria Police as not only shameless, but distasteful
for those who are paid with tax payers’ money to protect the citizenry.
Nonyelu said: ‘There
is only one version to all these stories making the rounds that is true, and
that is that the Police shot my brother.
“It was five days after his wedding and, according to the
friend he had gone to drop off, there was no argument, nor was there any
resistance to any move by the Police to arrest him. All he said he heard at the
approach of the now mystery policeman was, ‘Who is there?’ followed immediately by gunshots which felled
my brother.”
She also decried explanation given by the DPO on the night
of the incident stressing that he could neither explain why he got to the spot
and met Ugo gasping for breath and stood akimbo until the friend of the
deceased came back with the wife and other neighbors who now rushed the victim
to the nearest hospital.
She insisted that the DPO’s explanation of how he got to the
scene of a shoot out he claimed was reported to him by those who reside within
the estate without the company of his men leaves much to be desired. “After
all, we all know how the Police operate” she submits.
In a related development, the colleagues of the deceased at
the University of Lagos where he was to round up his masters degree led by the
Coordinator of the course Dr Soji George were in the family home of their dead
colleague who they described as jolly good fellow whose contribution to the
department would be hard to be equaled by any student.
They pledged to help in unraveling the culprit behind the
dastardly act as well as contributing to his burial arrangement.
Oguchukewu Ozuah, 36 was allegedly murdered by a policeman
attached to Anthony division last Thursday when he went to drop his friend
after he paid the deceased at his Oke-Oluwa Estate residence in Lagos.
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