Revealed! How police DIG charged murder victim’s family to court, released main suspects

The period between May and August, 2017 was a time of trouble and tragedy for 33-year-old Segun Salami, a local resident of Ilagbo, a tiny community in Ibeju Lekki area of Lagos.

In that period, Segun lost his father, Musiliu Salami and his friend, Sulaiman Akewusola, in a communal clash between Ilagbo and a neighbouring community, Oriyanrin.
Two months after the tragedies that shook his family and the entire community, Segun had hardly recovered from the trauma of those losses when he was arraigned alongside four others for arson and the murder of his father and friend.





But that is not the crux of his story. It would later emerge that Segun and his co-defendants, who spent three months in both police and prison custody were used as “replacements” for the actual suspects initially arrested for the crimes.

At the centre of these five men’s woes was the man who heads the highest investigating arm of the Nigeria Police, the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Abuja, Mr. Hycent Dagala.

According to court documents obtained by Saturday PUNCH, Segun Salami alongside his four cohorts, knew nothing about the crime they were accused of.

Yet, on the alleged orders of the DIG, they were charged before Magistrate Oshin of an Igbosere Magistrate’s Court, Lagos on August 15 on six counts of murder, conspiracy and arson.

In the six-count charge, the police accused Segun, Samson Abimbola (49), Sikiru Egunjemi (52), Aliu Egunjemi (52) and Jimoh Ogunnupe (37) of arming themselves with “guns, cutlasses, axes, sticks and other dangerous weapons and unlawfully attacking and killing” Suleiman Akeusola, Musliu Salami, Seun Taofik and Shina Ipaye.

These were crimes the police accused them of committing on May 21 and 22, 2017.

By the time the facts of their case went before the Directorate of Public Prosecution in Lagos for advice, the DPP ordered their release immediately, noting that they had nothing whatsoever to do with the murders and arson they had been accused of.

That was not the only strange thing in the case of these men.

According to a petition by their lawyer, Mr. Sadiku Ibitayo, they were accused of crimes that were actually committed against them and their own people, while the suspects who committed the crimes were alleged ordered to be released by the DIG CIID.

The suspects released are  Hammed Sanwo, Tosin Adenuga Muro Yusuf, Adebola Jabaru, and Muse Arashi.

Punch