Hawzah News Agency (Abuja, Nigeria) – On Tuesday, 21st January, 2020 Sheikh Zakzaky's followers staged a protest, demanding his unconditional release. The protest began from the market in Utako and terminated at the flyover bridge in Berger. The Nigeria Police couldn’t resist the urge to shed more blood, and they exactly did that.
Having attacked the heretofore dispersing free-Zakzaky protesters at the flyover, the police targeted innocent Nigerian citizens and thereafter resulted in dangerously wily conspiracy theories and false accusations to conceal their atrocities. The FCT-police spokesman, Anjuguri Manzah, purportedly claimed that the protesters attacked police operatives, and the latter took retaliatory actions which led to the death of a ‘passer-by’. However, was there anything farther from the truth?
After the police savagery, members of the general public, journalists, human rights activists and lawyers called for an in-depth, independent investigation into the brutal circumstance surrounding the ‘passer-by's death, and we also lent a certain voice to the call. There is no disputing the fact that it is already a success.
According to a medical certificate obtained from the National Hospital Abuja, and as published on the Sahara Reporters news website February 08, 2020, exposing the cause of the demise, having conducted an autopsy, the ‘passer-by’ died of 'brain evisceration' due to a ‘penetrating missile injury' [gunshot wound] he sustained by means of high-velocity bullets being fired at him by the police.
The slain person, whom the police initially claimed to be a ‘passer-by', turned out to be the journalist Alex Ameh Ogbu, who was, until the brutal murder, working with the Abuja-based Regent Africa Times magazine. And that was in their first cruel attempt at hiding the identity of the victim, who they even dubbed the victim of an accident when they took his corpse to mortuary.
The postmortem belied the police earlier devious claims, thus their being indicted by it. The police keep on killing innocent citizens of the nation only to feed their propaganda machines. Since it has become crystal clear that the police killed Mr. Ogbu, the trigger-happy officer who fired the bullets that slew him should be fished out with immediate alacrity and made to face the wrath of what he had committed, and again, blood money be paid to the family members of Mr. Ogbu.
In the same vein, like Mr. Alex Ogbu, like Precious Owolabi as well as DCP Usman Umar Belel, and the brutalities should stop. In less than a year, the police have killed several of their colleagues and twice as many journalists, and the number of Sheikh Zakzaky's followers gunned down are very, very many. It is sad!
Once again, we condemn such avoidable slaughters of fellow citizens and deem it unacceptable on all grounds. If anything else, they further prove that either the insidious incompetence or a complete lack of professionalism in the police institution has become a cancer.
Our incessant demand is the immediate and unconditional release of our leader Sheikh Ibraheem el-Zakzaky together with his wife, and we will continue to make such demand nonstop.
Abdullahi Muhammad Musa
Academic Forum of the Islamic movement in Nigeria Monday, 10th February, 2020
