By Ayo Okulaja


December 9, 2009 11:23AMT


The Nigeria Police Force is to probe the alleged mass killings in Enugu State, according to its spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu. He, however, dismissed the international media report saying, “this is false”.

In a phone interview with NEXT yesterday, Mr. Ojukwu said “the fact that the report is from a foreign media does not make it the gospel truth. These people just come up with names that do not exist and raise gross allegations, but I can assure you that this will be adequately investigated.”

What the BBC said

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had on Tuesday reported alleged cases of mass killings of suspects’ bodies being deposited at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu mortuary. It reported that several bodies have been given mass burial while over seventy are piled on each other at the mortuary.

This is coming on the heels of allegations of police killings in Ijebu-Ife last weekend.

The report added that lots of young men were being murdered by the police and their corpses dumped in the mortuary thus overwhelming the facility without any record of prosecution while officials of the hospital claim they have being conducting mass burials to decongest the morgue.

“It really overwhelms our capacity to store bodies,” Anthony Mbah, the chief medical director of the hospital, told the BBC. “We have between 70 and 80 bodies right now... and about three weeks ago, there was a mass burial of some other corpses. We are now getting ready to get these ones buried.”

The BBC reported that, in the mortuary, two rooms are set aside for the remains of the young men, which are stacked one atop the other.

Allegations everywhere

The report quoted the Enugu State Police Commissioner Mohamed Zarewa as saying men of the force were also killed in gun battles with armed robbers.

He said, “Not just to go and kill somebody, we don’t do that, it’s unconstitutional. We are in a democracy. You are asking about the young men, why are you not asking about the policemen who died? We people, we lose our lives.”

This was also confirmed by the police national public relations officer who told NEXT: “Yes, there are a number of casualties in cross fire between the police and armed gangs but he (the Enugu state Police Commissioner) never meant that the police kill civilians anyhow.”

On the statement of the chief medical director of the mortuary that the bodies were deposited by the police, Mr Ojukwu asked “was he on oath when he made such a statement? His word is not final and he has to show proof that the bodies were deposited by the police. If anyone is found liable for killing any Nigerian, he will face the full wrath of the law without any condolence,” he repeated.

The Human Right Watch had last week released a report accusing the federal government of condoning human rights abuses over its failure to charge anyone for the alleged killing of over hundreds of civilians by security forces in the last two years.

The New-York based organisation cited the violence in Plateau State in November 2008 and the execution of members of Islamic sect Boko Haram and their leader, Muhammad Yusuf, who was killed in police custody in July 2009 for examples.

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