Lagos Gov’t Kept Journalist Killed After #EndSARS Protest for 3 Years, Then Awarded Him to Sanwo-Olu’s Friend for Burial

On Sunday morning, a letter from the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency (LSPPA) went viral. This letter addressed to the state’s ministry of health confirmed the government’s intention to hold a mass burial for 103 fatal victims of the #EndSARS protest..

According to the letter, the state government awarded a ₦61,285,000 contract to TOS Funerals Limited to bury the bodies, a sum that equates ₦595,000 per body.

However, when Nigerians began to claim the government was finally owning up to the killings at Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020, the government responded with a statement saying none of the bodies was recovered from the tollgate, but from other parts of the state.

The state’s health ministry also alleged that after the protest, the chief coroner invited families of victims to claim their bodies but “nobody responded to claim any of the bodies”. This, however, was a lie.

In the aftermath of the #EndSARS violence, the office of the Chief Coroner invited members of the public Throughout public adverts and announcement who had lost loved ones or whose relatives had been declared missing between 19th and 27th October 2020 from various clashes as mentioned above, to contact the department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) to help with identification of these casualties deposited in State-owned morgues. Relatives were to undergo DNA tests for identification purposes. It is important to state categorically that nobody responded to claim any of the bodies.

However, after almost three years, the bodies remain unclaimed, adding to the congestion of the morgues. This spurred the need to decongest the morgues – a procedure that follows very careful medical and legal guidelines in the event that a relative may still turn up to claim a lost relative years after the incident.

— excerpt from Lagos State Ministry of Health statement (July 23, 2023

‘FIRST WE SAW OUR SON’S BODY, THEN IT WENT MISSING AGAIN’
Pelumi Onifade would have been a 23-year-old graduate today had his life not been cut short on October 25, 2020, by a police task force team led by one Yinka Egbeyemi.

The young intern journalist was interviewing a crowd of people assembled at a place where COVID-19 palliative was being looted in Oko Oba, Agege, Lagos, but never lived to tell the story as he first went missing, then found dead.

For five days, Onifade’s family and friends searched frantically for him. Distraught by the news of her son’s death, Abosede Onifade, his mother, was unable to join Olatunde, her husband, and other family members who went to a mortuary in Ikorodu on October 30, 2020, and found Pelumi’s lifeless body.

In a telephone interview with FIJ on Friday, Abosede said she saw the state government’s statement and was disappointed. She said, “They lied, the government lied, they are liars.”

Reliving the horror of the past three years, she told FIJ that contrary to the government’s claim that nobody showed up to claim the bodies, her husband was denied access to Pelumi’s body in 2020, and when they went back for it, the mortuary staff told them the body was no longer there.

The body would later be transferred to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), where the family was asked to do a DNA test to confirm if the deceased was their child.

‘WE DID DNA TEST, NEVER GOT RESULT BECAUSE OF SANWO-OLU’
In 2021, the Onifade family took their search to LASUTH hoping they could get Pelumi’s body and give him a befitting burial, but it was harder than they imagined.

Speaking with FIJ at the time, Olatunde said, “When we went to LASUTH, a doctor asked for our son’s name and we told him. He further informed us that autopsies had been carried on the bodies brought to the facility. He then advised us to take a DNA test and we did, but we never got the result.”

On Friday, Abosede said she and her husband submitted full-size pictures of themselves and gave samples for the test but were never invited for the results.

She said when they both pressed for answers, the doctor revealed to them that Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the State Governor, had taken responsibility for the tests and the hospital could not give results to the families until the state governor paid for them.

Meanwhile, Abosede revealed she counted more than 10 families present on the day she went to give her own DNA sample. “I could not stay and wait for everybody who came,” she told FIJ. “But while I was there, I saw people that came before me and those who came after me. They were more than 10 families that day alone.”

This claim contradicts the state government’s claim that nobody came to volunteer DNA samples and claim the bodies.

What stood between the Onifades and their slain son was the state-owned LASUTH, its protocol, and Sanwo-Olu. While the process dragged, Pelumi’s body was in a morgue owned by TOS funerals on the LASUTH premises. The morgue is a private company run by Taiwo Ogunsola, a friend of the governor. This is the same company that has now been awarded ₦595,000 to bury Pelumi.

‘THEY CALLED US FOR SECOND DNA TEST AFTER AWARDING CONTRACT’
“On Monday, we got a message asking that we go to the Lagos State DNA centre in CMS,” Abosede told FIJ. “I went there on Thursday. It is on 48, Broad Street, opposite Bookshop. While there, I saw the files from the DNA I did in 2021, but they collected another sample.

“They said they were inviting people again to come and give samples and check for their relatives, but they did not offer any explanation for why they did not use the samples we gave LASUTH.

“We asked them to tell us when to come back for updates, but they told us they would get back to us.”

Abosede said she did not want her son to be part of a mass burial but wanted to take custody of his body so the family could give him a befitting burial.

On Friday, FIJ called Gboyega Akosile, the chief press secretary to the state governor, but he declined our calls. As of press time, he had not responded to a message sent to him.

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