Metro

COAS orders investigation into killing of bride’s mother in Delta

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9 years ago

Six months after she was hacked down by a soldier from 3 Battalion, Nigerian Army, Effurun, Delta State, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant-General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, has ordered investigation into the extrajudicial killing of Mrs Alice Akparobi.

The investigation, according to a letter signed from the Nigerian Army Corps of Military Force, Abuja and signed by Commander K.C. Okoro, is to be carried out by the Army Special Investigation Bureau.

Akparobi, a judiciary staff in her early 50s, Metro gathered, was on her way to her eldest daughter’s house to dress up for her last daughter’s wedding on the morning of Saturday, April 30, when the tricycle she boarded was stopped.

It was learnt that she was subsequently stabbed to death by one of the soldiers manning a roadblock at Jakpa junction from the back of the commercial tricycle.

The soldiers, who were allegedly said to have been newly deployed from the North to the state at the time of the incident, accused the tricycle driver of violating the monthly environmental sanitation exercise that was being observed that day.

The COAS, in the directive, also ordered the investigation into the shooting of one Mr Shedrack Saduwa, aged 18.

Saduwa, a carpenter, was hit in the abdomen while returning from work and was admitted at the Bryant Hospital for three months for multiple gun injuries before he was discharged as an outpatient.

The two incidents had prompted the law firm of IKIMI OGHENEJABOR & CO., located in Udu, Udu Local Government Area to petition the National Human Rights Commission to order an investigation into the incidents.

Metro gathered that the authorities of 3 Battalion, Nigerian Army had earlier visited the family of Mrs Akparobi to commiserate with members who rejected some money they were allegedly given for the burial of the deceased.

Coordinator of the Centre for the Vulnerable and the Underprivileged (Centrep), Oghenejabor Ikimi, whose counsel for the two cases called on the COAS to ensure a thorough investigation into the incidents, with a view to bringing the trigger-happy soldiers to book to serve as a deterrent to others.