Police killed my 14-year-old son for nothing — Blind mother

Thursday, November 4,  2021 was just like any other normal day for 39 years-old visually impaired Mrs. Abidemi Sanyaolu. Since she became blind 10 years ago, things have been difficult but Mrs Sanyaolu was unusually happy on that day because her favourite son, 14 year-old Mubarak was on mid-term break and would make moving around the house less stressful for her.  In his usual ebullient nature, Mubarak made sure he provided the assistants his mother needed before setting off to a nearby workshop where he was an apprentice with a Vulcaniser.

Although she could not see, but by evening, Mrs Sanyaolu began to sense trouble around her Meiran resident in Lagos state as she heard the unusual sound of people running and shouting. A neighbour who was also running for safety, momentarily stopped to ask her the whereabouts of Mubarak but before she could answer, the neighbour had entered her house. Strangely, when she called her husband on phone, he was crying but wouldn’t say what the problem was. She continued to call other relatives until her elder sister told her that Mubarak had died of police gunshot which pierced his back and erupted his stomach. She passed out on hearing the shocking news.

Pain

Narrating her pains to Encounter, Mrs Sanyaolu said: “I still find it hard to believe that my son is dead. Mubarak was a very nice and loving child. He has been my eyes since I became blind. The pain is just too much. Who will now take me round whenever I need to go out, use the toilet or go for my hospital appointments? He is the one that takes me to the hospital and at times I will ask him to take permission from his school so that he could take me to the hospital.”

How Mubarak was shot

Mrs Sanyaolu told Encounter that because her family was poor, she encouraged her children to enrol for any vocational skill of their choice. According to her, Mubarak chose to learn car tyre repairs even though his dream was to become an aviation engineer. She said: “The day the incident happened, Mubarak was on mid-term break. Two weeks before then, he had gotten admission to a public school for his Senior Secondary, SS1 class. In the morning of that day, we heard on the radio that there was a fight between a policeman and a tricycle operator over N100 and the policeman stabbed the tricyclist to death. My husband later left  to go and get  Mubarak from the vulcanizers’ workshop.

“Later that day, I started hearing noises as people were running helter-skelter. We live in a shop because my husband cannot afford rent for a proper apartment. I kept asking people what was the problem when I heard a woman shouting and asking some children to go inside the house. One neighbour ran to me and asked me ‘where is Mubarak? I said he has gone to work. She repeated the question over and over again until I noticed that other neighbours had surrounded me.

“I called my husband on phone to ask him what was happening, but I noticed that he was crying but refused to tell me what the problem was. So I called our pastor and told him that my husband was crying but he also refused to say anything.  I then called my husband’s younger sister at Abeokuta and her voice was sounded strange. I eventually called my elder sister who told me that Mubarak was shot by the police.  I immediately fell down and started crying.

“I was later told that a team of policemen who were mobilised to stop tricycle operators from protesting the death of their colleagues were shooting sporadically. Mubarak boss then asked him to go home. It was while he was running home that the bullet hit him from the back.  His intestine came out and he died on the spot.

His dreams

‘’Mubarak often told me that his dream was to study and become an aviation engineer.   My response to him was that we will continue to pray to God to provide for us so that his dream can  become a reality.  Though, I am leaving everything in the hands of God, I want justice for my son, because there is no amount of whatever the police will give me that will equate  or bring back my son. I want the police officer who murdered my son in cold blood to be prosecuted. I want justice for my son.

“It has not been easy for me since he died. It is my husband that now guides me around. I still dream and think about my son. He wasn’t sick; he just got admission into secondary school. I know what I faced before he got the admission.  It was the goodwill of people that made him to be able to get the admission.”

Pressure on family to drop matter

According to Mrs Sanyaolu, police authority never paid her family any condolence visit instead a Divisional Police Officer, DPO  only called once to ask them to drop the case. She said: “The police have not done anything about the incident. They have not come to visit us. My son is still at the mortuary.  The only time a DPO  called my husband, was to tell him to forget about the case. I had four children and I have lost two of them.

How I became blind, lost another child

Narrating her personal struggles as a blind woman, Mrs Sanyaolu said: ‘’I was not born blind. I became blind over 10 years ago and it was Mubarak, that has been my eyes since then.

“Before I lost my sight, nothing happened to me, I go about my business, because I am a hairdresser, and I also do some petty trading. We were about having a ceremony that period, so on that day, I went to Oshodi market, alongside with my sister -in-law, to buy Aso-Ebi for the ceremony. While we were in the market, I started complaining that my eyes were itching me and my sister-in- law, asked me if I was sick before we left home. I said nothing happened to me, before we left home. I had a little child then with me who is also late now.  He died in 2019, but at that time, I was still breast feeding him, so I kept complaining to my husband, after my sister in-law had gone back to her house, that my eyes are still itching me. The itching became severe that my eyes were very red so we thought it was Apollo (conjunctivitis). After sometime, I started having breakout in some parts of my body so we thought that it was measles. My body became better after I had used some medications. When I visited the hospital, one elderly man, at the General Hospital, advised that we should not operate the eyes so we started going to church. I became completely blind in October 2012.

N1bn suit

Meanwhile, the family has filed a N1billion suit before an Ikeja High Court of Lagos, to demand justice for the 14 year old Mubarak killed by Police at Meiran.

In the suit, the family through their lawyer, Mr Ayo Ademiluyi, said that since the unfortunate death of the young boy, his father, Mr. Olamilekan Sanyaolu and his blind mother had been subjected to daily tears without consolation from the Police, who has continued to tell his father to simply forget about the incident and move on with his life.

They are demanding the immediate arrest and prosecution of  culpable Police Officers involved in the cold murder of Mubarak Sanyaolu.

They also demanded that the Chief Pathologist of Lagos State should conduct autopsy on the corpse of Mubarak Sanyaolu.(Courtesy Vanguard)