“The young man raised his left hand to my rifle and said ‘I will kill you’./Before I could drag it from him, my belt entered the trigger then it fired. It was not intentional or deliberate to kill him,” a Nigerian Police officer while narrating how he killed a young Delta State trader, Onyeka Emmanuel Ibe.
It was learned that the young trader was allegedly shot dead at a checkpoint in Anwai-Ugbolu road, near Asaba, the capital of Delta State.
However, in his account on how the trader got killed, the officer, who had since been detained claimed, “I heard a voice from about 10 to 15km, saying, ‘hold him, hold him’. Before I could turn, the young man raised his left hand to my rifle and said ‘I will kill you’.
“Before I could drag it from him, my belt entered the trigger then it fired. It was not intentional or deliberate to kill him.”
Public commotion was sparked by the young man’s death as irate youngsters blocked key streets in Asaba over the purported extrajudicial shooting by the police.
Ibe was allegedly stopped by police officers at a checkpoint along the Ugbolu-Asaba Highway while en route to work. His coworkers said that when he refused to pay a N100 bribe, one of the officers became enraged and shot him in the head, instantly killing him.
The state police commissioner was present to welcome the demonstrators when they went to the police headquarters in Asaba and assured them that investigations into the sad incident were ongoing and the cop in question was already in prison.
The Commissioner of Police, Ari Ali said, “I can assure you nobody can cover this. It is an ugly situation and we are not happy that it happened the way it happened.”
The demonstrators took the victim’s corpse to the Government House after being dissatisfied with the police response in order to ask the state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, for help in conducting a comprehensive inquiry.
The deceased traded in phones and phone accessories up to his untimely passing. According to reports, he recently got married, and his loss has saddened his wife and other family members.