The Fasere family of Ilupeji-Ekiti, Ekiti State, whose son, a
400-level student of Ekiti State University (EKSU), Mr. Seyi Fasere, was shot
dead by policemen in Oye-Ekiti on February 28, has rejected the ballistic and
post mortem reports from the police. The family also rejected an offer by the
police to come and claim the corpse for burial.
The family said: “There are a lot of issues that are unclear to
us in the process of arriving at the police report on the murder and we also
question the report of the unilateral autopsy carried out on the body by the
police.” The family told newsmen in Ado Ekiti at the weekend that they refused
to claim the body for interment because they could see the police were trying
to do a lot of cover up. Speaking on behalf of the Fasere family, a human
rights activist, Mr. Musibau Ayodeji Ali, told newsmen that, “the police
invited us to a meeting and the DPO of Oye just announced to us that we can now
come and claim Seyi’s body so that we can bury him.
“The DPO, Mr. Akeem Sikiru, told us at a meeting in his office
that we should take a paper that would allow us to claim the corpse for burial.
We rejected that because of the arrogance and unilateral action of the police.
The DPO told us that the invitation to the family was to tell us that he had
been directed by the police authorities to tell us to come and claim the
corpse.” He decried what he described as the unilateral action of the police in
the matter, alleging that no member of the Fasere family had been given a copy
of the report of the investigation carried out by the police in the matter.
“We don’t believe that the police have concluded work on the
investigation,” he added. According to Ali, “we rejected the police position
because we do not have a copy of either the ballistic or autopsy report. We
were not informed when the autopsy was carried out so that we could nominate
our own doctor to ascertain the report. So without the representation of the
family, we cannot accept the report. “The panel that investigated the murder
has not completed its job because it did not invite the human rights community
to partake in the report. “Are they saying that the young man would be buried
in the current state in which no one has been able to ascertain the status of
the innocent student, which the police labelled as an armed robber?” he asked.
The activist said the state government set up a judicial panel of inquiry.
The panel, according to the him, would be the one to investigate
the matter and recommend appropriately to the relevant authorities. “The name
of the murdered student should be cleared because so far, we cannot agree that
he was an armed robber as the police had been trying to make the whole world to
believe. “The family members that were arrested, detained and dehumanised in
the guise that they were ‘relations of an armed robber’ should be compensated
for the trauma that they have been through,” he added. He emphasised that the
family was not ready to take the corpse from the police until they are sure of
what the report is all about and what it contains because we are not party to
the report, nor are we sure yet who the report is all about.”
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