Jennifer Ugwueke
Former Minister of Finance, Senator Nenadi Usman, yesterday approached the Independent Investigative Panel on Human Rights Violations by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad( SARS)and other Units of the Nigeria Police Force, sitting in Abuja, to seek redress for the extra-judicial murder of her niece, Miss Anita Akapson, by a trigger-happy police officer in 2018.
31-year old Miss Akapson was shot at close range by a Deputy Superintendent of Police, Godwin Wagozie, on October 13, 2018.
The Police initially claimed that the deceased who had just returned to Nigeria after her graduation from Kent University in the United Kingdom, was killed in a case of mistaken identity. It stated that an officer shot her because he thought she was an armed robber that was escaping from the scene of a crime.
However, in several petitions, copies of which were forwarded to President Muhammadu Buhari, the National Security Adviser and the Chairman, Police Service Commission, the family of Akapson and the former Minister of Finance, maintained that the deceased was “trailed, targeted, intercepted, her vehicle brushed, blocked and shot at close range by a police officer while she was sitting in her vehicle (An Honda Accord Salon) at Katampe District, Abuja”.
The family insisted that “circumstances of the trailing, tracking and gruesome murder of the deceased who had a strong affinity with Senator Nenadi Usman, a member of the leading opposition political party in Nigeria, and who is presently facing continuous prosecutions from the States, unleashed with inattentive executive sanctions, calls for thorough and comprehensive investigation”.
Meanwhile, though the police officer that pulled the trigger, DSP Wagozie, had since been prosecuted and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment. However, family of the deceased and Senator Usman, in the joint petition they filed before the Abuja Investigative Panel, are demanding a compensation of N5billion from the Nigerian Police Force.
Cited as 1st to 3rd Respondents in the petition marked 2020/IIP/SARS/ABJ/192, are the killer cop, Wagozie, who served at the Gwarinpa Division of the FCT Police Command, the Commissioner of Police FCT, as well as the Inspector General of Police.
Led in evidence by their lawyer, Mr. Obinna Ugwu, mother of the deceased, Mrs. Esther Akapson, said her late daughter was “an asset to the family”.
She said: “I am the mother of the deceased, a civil servant and Chief Accountant with the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
“On October 13, 2018, we got a call from my elder daughter that Anita was shot and she died as a result of the shot. The Police blocked her car.
“The late Anita was a graduate of Kent University in the UK. She could have stayed back to get job there, but she chose to come to Nigeria.
“We have been traumatized. It has not been easy for me. No amount of money can bring her back. We are before this panel to seek compensation to assuage the trauma the family has passed through. Anita was an asset for the family but her life was cut short because they f carelessness of a Policeman”, she added.
She further decried that since the incident, “there has not been any delegation of the Police to console the family”.
Police lawyer, Mr. James Idachaba however urged the panel headed by a former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Suleiman Galadima, to take cognizance of the fact that the officer involved in the extra-judicial murder had since been convicted and already serving prison term.
Idachaba argued that it was wrong to address Wagozie as a DSP in the petition since he had since been dismissed from the police force.
Chairman of the panel, Justice Sulieman subsequently adjourned the matter sine-die (indefinitely), even as he directed Police to organize a “high-powered delegation” to visit and commiserate with the family of the deceased before the resumption of proceedings in the case.