How police killed, injured protesters during #EndBadGovernance protests in Niger State

The stray bullet that killed Yahaya Isah, a 32-year-old resident of Church Road, Suleja, Niger State, pierced through his left ear and exited around his right cranium. Its destructive path would have continued had it not hit a concrete wall behind a container across the road where Mr Isah was standing.

Mr Isah, a father of one, was not participating in the protest. He had gone to withdraw some cash from a Point of Sale (POS) vendor down the street, the deceased’s family members, including Aisha, his ailing mother, and his pregnant wife, Rihanatu, told PREMIUM TIMES.

The deceased was the third male child of Nda Isah’s polygamous family — and the second child of his mother. He could not further his education to the tertiary level and was enrolled in carpentry training, where he honed his skills and worked towards building a better future until his life was cut short by the police.

“More than a husband, he was like a father since the time I lost mine,” Rihanatu, who is due for delivery this month, said, her eyes filled with tears.

Late Mr Isah and his wife, Rihanatu

“Yahaya died with many dreams unachieved,” the deceased’s mother muttered. “There were times he would come to my room and assure me things would get better…”

Hunger, anger-driven protests

Hungry and angry, many Nigerians led by different groups, including former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore’s Take It Back Movement, marched against economic hardship resulting from unfavourable government policies.

The protesters made a long list of demands, such as the return of petrol subsidies removed by President Bola Tinubu during his inaugural speech last year.

Specifically, they called for the reversal of the fuel price hike to below N300 per litre, the reduction of electricity tariffs, and the reduction of import duties to their previous rates.

They also demanded the reversal of many institutions’ hikes in tertiary education fees. The protesters demanded transparency and accountability in governance, including public disclosure and reduction of public officials’ salaries and allowances and an emergency fund to support SMEs.

They also called for electoral reforms, including strengthening the autonomy of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and adapting live electronic transmission of election results.

Additionally, they demanded reform of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), a state of emergency on inflation, and a reform of the judiciary to ensure swift justice delivery.

The Nigerian government tried to prevent the protests through persuasion and subtle threats, but it ultimately resorted to using force to suppress them.

Protests were eventually held in many states, including Abuja, Borno, Kaduna, Kano and Niger, where killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions were recorded.

In these states, no fewer than 22 protesters were killed in the first four days of the protests, according to an X thread by Amnesty International’s Nigeria office — more than 10 in Kano, six in Niger, three each in Borno and Kaduna.

When the rights group first estimated the death toll at 13 after the first day of the protest on 1 August, police disputed the figure, arguing only seven people died in Borno and Kebbi. They further exonerated their operatives from the killings.

Olumuyiwa Adejobi, the police spokesperson, in a statement, blamed the deaths on a terror bomb attack, a car accident and an attempted looting.

The police boss, Kayode Egbetokun, would further extoll his officers for being civil with the protesters. This was despite glaring evidence of rights violations.

President Tinubu addressed the nation on the fourth day of the protest, but his words could not persuade some protesters to leave the streets. The president also failed to condemn police excesses nor authorise an investigation into them. Although the protests have ended, the demands have not been met, with the protesters now vowing to begin another round of protests on 1 October.

The Niger killings

On the first day of the protests in Niger State, Amnesty International estimated the casualties at six. PREMIUM TIMES confirmed five based on interviews with their associates and family members.

On the fifth day of the protests, a scavenger simply identified as Sani was shot in the belly in Niger State, bringing the death toll to six.

Mr Sani, who just joined the scavenging business at Hayi, a restive community along the Kaduna-Abuja highway in Suleja, died in a hospital in Gwagwalada, Abuja.

It was not only Mr Isah the police killed around Church Road, Suleja, on 1 August. They also shot a commercial motorcyclist, Musa Muhammadu, in his upper belly. He died on the spot.

The deceased, searching for greener pastures, migrated from Hadejia in Jigawa State to Suleja about 12 years ago.

After Mr Muhammadu’s death, his colleagues, who shared a small room, notified his family of the tragic news by phone. He was subsequently buried in Suleja. His hustling clothes and phone were the only things he left behind.

“We are trying to sell the phone and send the money to his father,” Nafiu Garba, one of his colleagues dressed in a black hoodie and jeans trousers, said.

On the same day, 38-year-old Muhammadu Bunkau, a truck driver from Sabon Wuse, was tragically shot in the head while searching for his mentally ill brother, according to his younger sister, Halimah, who recounted the incident with grief.

“He was… only trying to save our brother, Samaila,” Halimah said, her voice quivering.

Halimah Bunkau mourns her elder brother killed by the police in Sabon Wuse, Niger State(PHOTO CREDIT: PREMIUM TIMES)

Mr Bunkau died immediately after he was shot, eyewitnesses told his sister, who shared the picture of his lifeless body lying between the highway demarcations along Abuja-Kaduna Road in Sabon Wuse.

The deceased was buried with the bullet in his head.

Halimah explained that the family was still struggling to recover from their mother’s death. The septuagenarian woman had died three weeks earlier in northeastern Taraba State, after a protracted illness.

The twin losses — in less than a month — have plunged Halimah into a depth of sorrow, leaving her overcome with uncontrollable tears.

Grieving mother

The grief of losing her first son gripped 37-year-old Aisha. Lost in thought, she sat on a worn couch with her left arm propped on the corrugated zinc sheet wall of their hut, built on the edge of a flood-prone canal in Hayi, Kaduna Road.

Aisha Shamsu rests her rested her left arm on their zinc-made hut built on the edge of a flood-prone canal in Hayi, Kaduna Road (PHOTO CREDIT: PREMIUM TIMES)

Unlike her husband, Abdullahi Shamsu, who masked his pain with a brave face, Mrs Shamsu could not hide hers.

“Irreplaceable,” she described her 23-year-old son, Khalifa, who was shot during the protests on 1 August.

That day, Khalifa did not go to his mechanic workshop. As he usually did every morning, he went to greet his mother and seized the opportunity to inform her he would be joining the protest.

“He told me he would be joining the protests against the hardships facing our family and many others,” Mrs Shamsu recounted her last moments with her son.

Knowing her husband had also left for the protests, she didn’t object.

“I told him to be careful… not get into trouble or fight with anyone and I wished him safe return,” the bereaved mother continued.

Mrs Shamsu said she was cooking “when I heard that my son was shot.” She did not believe it until his body was brought home.

For Mr Shamsu and his wife, no one can fill the gap of their deceased son — not even the rest of his nine siblings, they said.

The deceased, according to his father, had shouldered some responsibilities in the house, “making the burden less on me.”

Injured and hospitalised

Apart from those that were killed, between the first and fifth days of the protests, security agents, including the police, fired shots that injured at least seven people, including a minor, an almajiri boy.

The chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Suleja branch, Abdullahi Liman, told PREMIUM TIMES that the boy and three other adults were shot during the protests on the first day of the protest.

According to Mr Liman, the four victims were taken to Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital “for urgent medical attention.”

Our reporter further tracked three more people injured during the protests.

When 22-year-old Biliyaminu Yunusa was shot in the forehead on 1 August, he immediately passed out, only to later find himself in a hospital bed.

Mr Yunusa believes he was shot by a local vigilante. “The bullets they removed from my head were mostly used by hunters and vigilantes,” he explained.

Ismail Dahiru, a scavenger, and Muhammadu Bashiru, a dry cleaner, were at work when some police officers stormed their space and fired shots at them.

Ismail Dahiru suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. He was transferred to a hospital in Kaduna State.

While Mr Dahiru, who suffered a gunshot wound to the chest, was transferred to Kaduna State for further medical treatment, Mr Bashiru, whose right hand was brushed by bullets, has recovered and returned to work.

The blatant denial

The families of the deceased people were saddened not only by the killings of their loved ones but also by the denial by the police.

PREMIUM TIMES reviewed the pictures of corpses identified by relatives and associates to be lifeless bodies of Mr Shamsu, Mr Bunkau, and Mr Isah. They were too graphic for publication.

“There was no life lost,” Wasiu Abiodun, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) for the Niger State Police Command, claimed in a statement dated 4 August.

Instead, the police responded to the looting and arson of Tafa LGA Secretariat in Sabon Wuse, Mr Abioudun, a police superintendent, said, adding 11 “miscreants” were arrested that day.

While acknowledging that “violent protesters were dispersed with the use of minimum force,” Mr Abidoun noted that some miscreants sustained injuries during the stampede “and most of them were taken to different nearby medical facilities for treatment.”

“I was told the police denied killing my son,” Mr Isah’s mother said as she raised her head and looked into our reporter’s eyes. “They can deny it but I will never forgive his killers.”

When Mr Isah was shot, his brothers, led by Abdullahi, a grassroots politician, went to ‘Division A’ police station to make a formal complaint.

READ ALSO: #EndBadGovernance: How Nigerian govt., security agencies, protesters breach NHRC protest advisory, global standards

“The DPO, instead of sympathising with us, grabbed his AK-47 rifle and ordered us to leave his office,” Mr Abdullahi said, hoping the family gets justice.

Quest for justice

Apart from Mr Isah’s family, other families who lost their loved ones seem to have left everything to God.

However, Mr Liman, the NBA chairman in Suleja, said the legal body will collect evidence and pursue justice for the families of the deceased persons.

When he spoke to PREMIUM TIMES on 7 August, Mr Liman said the NBA, at the national level, had charged its local branches to monitor the situation and report their findings to a committee set up to take up the legal procedures.