Controversy, As Family Accuses Delta Police Of Killing Their Son

caption: IGP Abubakar Mohammed

Accusations and counter accusations have continued to trail the recent gruesome murder of Mr. Bernard Chigwe, Head of Personnel Management (HPM), Isoko North local government area of Delta state.

Mr. Chigwe was murdered in controversial circumstances on his farm in Kwale, headquarters of Ndokwa West council area on September, 30, when some policemen went with him to the farm to arrest some Fulani herdsmen who were alleged to have been destroying products.

Addressing pressmen in Asaba today, Barrister Emeka Chigwe, on behalf of the family, asserted that apart from the conflicting stories surrounding the murder, the police are attempting to shield the actual identity of his murderers and suppress all strategies towards their apprehension.

According to the lawyer, their belief is that one Momodu Osuya, a Vigilante and Youth Leader, and four police officers from Kwale Police Division, all of whom were present with the deceased when he was murdered, have a hand in it, judging from the contradictory accounts given by the police of the incident, and the incontrovertible evidence they say was gathered from the scene of the crime.

The lawyer said that even when the family petitioned the Commissioner of Police on the contradictions and suspicious complacency of the police team in Kwale, the crack team of homicide detectives from the state CID which visited the crime scene discovered no bush anywhere to facilitate the kind of ambush alleged by the Oferm team.  Similarly, there were no fresh cattle footprints, nor were any wasted bullet pellet found in the area.
Chigwe maintained that the police’s spurious impression that a Fulani herdsman, Sule Maigari, who shot the deceased had been arrested was corporate false hood and an effort to absolve them of complicity in the murder of their son stressing that the said Maigari was nowhere near the scene of crime on the day in question.

But the Delta state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Ikechukwu Aduba, said there is no controversy surrounding the matter.  He claimed that one of the suspects, with a bullet wound in his stomach, was arrested at Onitsha through painstaking investigation, and that the doctor treating the suspect and two suspects are helping the police in their investigation.

He said the suspects have been charged to court for conspiracy and murder and have been remanded, regretting that instead of the family of the victims to commend the police they are blaming the force in an attempt to retrieve the vehicle of the deceased.
He threatened that if at the end of it the family is found to have given false information and are not able to prove their allegations as none of them was at the scene, they would be taken up.