A Catholic Priest, Rev. Fr. Henry Ayo Sanni, on Friday, told the Independent Investigation Panel on Human Rights Violations by the defunct SARS and other units of the Nigeria Police Force how his younger brother, Femi Sanni, was allegedly gunned down by the Police in Abuja in 2007.
He said he had been deceiving the 13 years son of his brother that he his his father but that the intelligent boy had begun querying the claim because he knows Rev. Fathers do not have children.
Testifying before the panel, the Catholic Priest from Ilorin Diocese in Kwara State said that the police wrongly named his brother an armed robber because they just wanted to kill him.
A statement by the Deputy Director (Public Relations and External Linkages), Fatimah Agwai Mohammed, obtained by our correspondent on Saturday, quoted Sanni as saying that his late brother was a businessman who owned two block industries in Abuja and another one in Ilorin, Kwara state.
The Priest therefore asked the panel to order the payment of N250 million compensation in their favour, considering the alleged ordeal of his brother in the hands of the Police and his extra-judicial killing thereafter, among several other violations.
While being led by his counsel, Kolade Akande, the complainant informed the panel that he got a phone call from Abuja that his brother has been arrested by the police and he quickly came to Abuja to confirm the incident.
He told the panel that when he came to Abuja, he visited FCT Police Command at Garki, where he met one DSP Uzoma Nwoha who is the Police Public Relations Officer FCT Command, who he alleged, threaten to gun him down if he continued asking about his brother.
Sanni narrated to the panel presided by Dr. Garba Tetengi (SAN) on behalf of the Chairman, Justice Suleiman Galadima (retd.), that DSP Nwoha asked him to go and that the best he could do to his brother is to pray for him because he was already in the morgue.
According to him, with the alleged threat coming from the FCT Police PRO, he decided to leave the Police Command and that while he was leaving, an unnamed officer, who he said recognized him as a Priest, told him that his brother might be one of the two persons arrested by the police and taken to a place he does not know.
He said that he was shocked when he finally got to the morgue in Abuja, where he found the corpse of his brother mutilated, with some signs which showed that the police shot him on the chest at close range.
In addition to the above testimonies, the Catholic clergy informed the panel that his brother was shot by the police barely one year after his marriage, leaving the wife with one month old pregnancy and a baby afterwards.
Besides, he informed the panel that he had always made his late brother’s son to believe that he (Fr. Ayo Sanni) is his father.
Now that the boy is about 13 years, he had started asking more questions concerning the whereabouts of his father, saying that he knows Revered Fathers do not get married and therefore it is not possible for him to be his father, he told the panel.
On cross-examination, he told the panel that letters were written to the Inspector General of Police and Kwara State government in respect of this case.
He told the panel that his late brother was sometimes paraded by the Police before the media, including NTA as an armed robber, an allegation he said was not true.
The case was adjourned till March 9 2022 for defense.
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