Occupy Nigeria Protest; I don’t know how bullets left my AK-47, dismissed DPO tells court

Adedamola Daramola being manhandled. 

Lagos—A former Divisional Police Officer, DPO, Segun Fabunmi, attached to Pen Cinema Division of Lagos State Police Command, Wednesday, told a Lagos High Court that he could not explain how the ammunition allocated to him left his rifle.

Fabunmi, who had been dismissed, is standing trial for allegedly killing one Ademola Daramola and injuring others during the mass protest on fuel subsidy, organized by Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress, TUC, of Nigeria, in January 9, 2012.

The alleged offence was committed at Yaya-Abatan, Agege, during the protest. At the resumed hearing of the trial, Fabunmi said the AK-47 rifle was opened, while on his way to the scene of protest, adding that after Daramola died, he could no longer remember how many rounds of ammunition were left in the rifle until he was about being detained.

Fabunmi, who was being cross-examined by Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Mrs. Olabisi Ogungbesan, told Justice Olabisi Akinlade that he neither chased anybody, shot nor injured people. He said: “I did not run after the late Ademola Daramola, may his soul rest in peace. I do not know him. Why would I chase him? It is ridiculous. “I never ran to anywhere neither did I fire any shot at anybody.” The defendant also told Justice Olabisi Akinlade that on January 9, 2012, he received a distress call that hoodlums at Yaya Abatan Junction, Ogba Agege area, were breaking people’s windscreens and holding innocent people hostage.

He said when he got there, there was break down of law and order and that immediately the hoodlums saw him and the other seven police officers, they started throwing bottles, sticks, cutlasses, stones and Molotov Curtails. When asked if he knew that some ammunition got out of his gun, Fabunmi said: ”Yes. I knew that some ammunition got out of my gun when the hoodlums were trying to dispossess me of my rifle, after I sustained injury. “It took the grace of God for them not to have collected the rifle from me. The other police officers all ran away.”

He said he had only been DPO of Pen Cinema Police Division for two months and that he went to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital for treatment, but that he could not remember the name of the doctor that treated him. However, Justice Akinlade adjourned the matter to February 18, 2015, for the adoption of written addresses.

Source: Vanguard