Baridon Monsi, the Divisional Police Officer, DPO, in charge of Mile 3, Nkpolu Police Station in Port Harcourt and other seven officers are cooling their heads in detention for allegedly shooting a barrow pusher, Abdullahi Idris, to death.
Idris was said to have been accosted by a group of boys while conveying a generating set, who subsequently accused him of stealing it.
According to the South-south/South-east coordinator of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Alhaji Musa Saidu, the deceased was a wheelbarrow pusher from Tambua in Gezawa Local Government Area of Kano State, hired to convey a generating set for someone who was also killed by the police over alleged generator theft.
Saidu explained that the deceased was lynched by the mob before he was arrested and detained allegedly on the orders of the DPO in charge of Mile 3, Nkpolu Police Station.
Saidu said pleas made by Idris that the generating set he was carrying was not stolen but was being conveyed was ignored.
He added that when relations of the deceased went to the police station to secure his bail, they were informed that the deceased was no longer in their custody.
“The leaders of Hausa community in Rivers were pained by the information and took the matter to the Commissioner of Police, Usman Belel, who went to the station only to observe that our narration was true, that the deceased was shot and buried on the orders of the DPO without investigations.
“Idris was only two months old in Port Harcourt. He was a wheelbarrow pusher before he met his untimely death. He was accosted by some persons who accused him of stealing the generator. We called the DPO and he asked us to come back in the evening. When we came back we could not see the DPO. We called his line severally and he did not pick his calls. When we inquired further, we were informed that the DPO ordered his men to shoot the boy before the evening appointment he gave to us.
“The DPO told the police commissioner that the deceased was shot because he and his group wanted to shoot him. The DPO took the Commissioner to where the deceased was buried and the Commissioner ordered that the body be exhumed. He also directed that both the DPO and other police officers involved in the death of the deceased be arrested.”
Nnamdi Omoni, the Rivers State Police Public Relations Officers while confirming the incident said that the DPO and four policemen have been arrested and detained over the matter.
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