A survivor of the recent mayhem that killed several corps members in the North narrates how she escaped death by the whiskers as mourning parents and relations of victims call on the National Youth Service Corps to release the bodies of their children in this report by SEGUN OLUGBILE
When Seun Adewumi completed his degree programme at the Olabisi Onabanjo University , Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, his dream was to take care of his 62-year-old mother, a retired cleaner of the Judicial Service Commission, Lagos State .
With enthusiasm, he gladly received his posting to Bauchi State for the one year mandatory National Youth Service Corps Scheme with the hope that he would get a good job after his service year and move his mother from the uncompleted building she lives in, at Agbado, an outskirt of Lagos , to a more decent apartment.
But this dream was shattered as life was snuffed out of the 27 year-old Political Science graduate in a gruesome manner last Monday by post-election rioters in Giade, the headquarters of Giade Local Government Area of Bauchi State.
Born in Lagos , Adewumi, a native of Imojo-Ekiti in Oye Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State, was the only graduate out of his mother’s six children.
One of the corps members that survived the attack where over seven of her colleagues met their untimely deaths, Wumi, said Seun was butchered to death by rioters.
According to the female corps member, who spoke with our correspondent on the telephone on Sunday, the corps members became agitated when they discovered that the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission located beside the Youth Corps Members lodge in Giade had been set on fire by the rioters.
“The Youth Corps Members’ Lodge is just a stone throw to the INEC office, so when we saw it on fire, we all ran to the police station for safety. The Divisional Police Officer allowed us to stay. But a few minutes later, the rioters numbering over 300, swooped on the police station, stoned the policemen, overran the station and set it on fire. The rioters had their way because the policemen were only shooting teargas canisters against them. One of the stones hit the DPO on his head and it was at this point that he ordered all of us to leave the station,’’ Wumi said.
The corps members were thus forced out of the police station into the waiting hands of the devil-inspired rioters. While some, including Wumi, escaped with wounds, seven others including Seun could not make it. They were butchered by the rioters, who were protesting the defeat of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, (retd), the candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change in the April 16 Presidential Election.
“It was a war situation and all of us were just running at different directions. They were inflicting machete cuts on us. They hit me on the head, on the shoulder and back but I kept on running. But thank God, two men on Okada just emerged from nowhere and confronted my attackers. They pleaded with them to leave us alone but when they discovered that they were desperate to kill all of us, one of them just carried me and put me on the motorcycle and sped off. I was taken to a village far from the war zone,’’ she narrated.
When her rescuers saw that she could die of bleeding, they reported her case to the Emir of the village that assisted her in getting medical attention.
“The emir sent a car to take me to the hospital. But before I was rescued, Seun and others were killed by the rioters in a gruesome manner. Some of them were set on fire,” she said.
At Lagos , Seun’s mother, Mrs. Beatrice Adewumi, had become apprehensive after learning that corps members were being killed in some parts of the North including Bauchi.
Though her son spoke with her a day earlier (on Sunday), she still called her younger brother, Venerable Samuel Ojo, who is also the Vicar of The African Church Cathedral, College Road, Ifako-Ijaiye, Lagos to confirm if he had spoken with Seun in recent time. The woman, who spoke with our correspondent at the vicarage of The African Church Cathedral on Sunday amidst sobs, said she did not know that that Sunday was the last time she would speak with her son.
“He called me on Sunday and said I should please tell one of our distant relations who is a lawyer to get a job for him as he was scheduled to complete his service year in June. I did not know that that would be the last time I would speak with my star. Seun had made a lot of promises to me. He said I should not worry that he would take good care of me.
“Each time he came home from school for food and money, he would call me aside and say, ‘Mummy, don’t worry, I know that you don’t have money but please try and finance my education, I will soon complete my education and after graduation, I will take very good care of you.’ I didn’t know that that promise would not be kept. They have killed my hope, they have killed my shinning light,” the woman who was surrounded by relatives and her brother, Ojo, cried.
Beatrice said she retired in 2009 from the service of the Lagos State Government. She pleaded with the NYSC to release the corpse of her son to her.
“My brother spent over four days before he could get the NYSC Bauchi to confirm his death. But please tell them to give me his corpse because in our tradition when you say somebody is dead, we must see the corpse. Omo eni ku san ju omo eni sonu lo, e bami gbe oku re abi kile fe fi se leyin igba ti eti pa (It is better to lose a child to death than to say a child is missing, please give me his corpse or what else do you want to do with the corpse after you have killed him,)” she said to no one in particular.
Seun’s sister, Ruth, also said that the family would miss the deceased in so many ways. “Seun suffered; many times he would go and do odd jobs to complement the little money our mother could give. He was determined to succeed but see how some senseless, uneducated and barbaric people just killed him. Government should scrap the NYSC. They should compensate my mother because she sacrificed a lot to see him through the university,” Ruth, who is a trained hairdresser, said.
Speaking on the trauma the family had gone through since the young man was killed on Monday; Ojo expressed bitterness at the inability of the NYSC to inform them about the death. This, he said, further traumatised the family as members were left in the dark concerning his whereabouts.
Narrating the event that led to the death of Seun, Ojo said Seun called him around 10am on Monday, April 18 to pray for him as there was a crisis in Giade.
“I asked him what the problem was and he said the rioters had attacked the INEC office and they were on their way to the police station because their lodge was not far from the place. I said he should not worry that we would be praying. But when I called him back, he said they were already in the police station. I was happy but when I called him back around 1pm his mobile phone was dead. I became apprehensive.
“We started calling all his friends and other people from our church that were posted to Bauchi. Nobody knew anything about his whereabouts. Some of them gave us the number of the Bauchi State Coordinator of the NYSC, that of his personal assistant and the Zonal Inspector of Seun’s local government. We tried all the numbers but nobody picked it. It was not until Thursday that the personal assistant to the coordinator picked my call and confirmed that Seun was no more. What the NYSC did was not fair. We were traumatised and subjected to emotional trauma between Monday and Thursday last week,” he said.
The angry cleric said if not for God and his faith in Jesus, he would have gone on a vengeance mission, because according to him, there was no reason why corps members should be attacked because of election.
“Even Seun did not participate in the election. He was not one of the corps members used for the election, so why should they kill him. They should just release his corpse to us and they should compensate the family,” he said.
Some of the seven corps members killed at the police station, according to one of the Corps Liaison Officer in Bauchi State , include Ukeoma Ikechukwu, Anslem Sylvester Nkwazema, Obinna Okpokiri and Kehinde Adeniyi.
According to the CLO, who pleaded anonymity, because corps members are not allowed to speak to the press, Ukeoma and Nkwazema were chased by an angry mob on April 18 and ran into a police station at Giade.
“Unfortunately, the mob was so large than they were able to overpower the policemen after setting the station on fire and all the corps members ran out. Ukweoma and Nkwazema were beaten to death by the mob.
“Adeniyi, a Muslim, who was identified by one of his pupils, was subsequently beaten to death by the angry mob.
Okpokiri, according to a friend that schooled with him in the United Kingdom, was not only beaten to death, but was burnt after he was killed.
The CLO added that Ikechukwu had by 6.48am that day posted a message on his Face book wall narrating how he nearly escaped being lynched by election riggers after he refused to hand over ballot papers to them during the election on April 16.
“The timely intervention of the police saved me,” Ikechukwu whose Face book name is Ukeoma Aikfavour, had written.
“These CPC supporters would have killed me yesterday, no see threat ooo. Even after forcing under-age voters on me, they wanted me to give them the remaining ballot papers to thumb print. Thank God for the police and I’m happy I could stand for God and my nation. To all corps members who stood despite these threats especially in the North, bravo! Nigeria our change has come,” he added.
On the same Face book page some hours later, a friend named Vivesparkle Emmanuel wrote,
“Please, you all should pray for Aik. As at yesterday, some angry mob were shooting guns around them. They were able to take them later to the nearest police station only for him to call that the mob were threatening to burn down the place. We’ve lost contact with him because his phone has been unreachable. Kindly pray for him and others in the same condition. Thanks.”
But the call for prayers came rather too late as Aik was one of the unfortunate corps members killed by the rioters.
Their deaths have, however, renewed calls for the scrapping of the NYSC as most parents including Ojo, are now calling on the Federal Government to do away with the scheme.
But Seun’s mother said that if government would not scrap the NYSC, it should only post corps members to states within their geo-political zones.
“In Ekiti, we don’t maltreat corps members. We take care of them, we give them free accommodation, if the Hausa people are killing our children, then they should not be posted to the North again. Let them serve in their geo-political zones. But they should please release my son’s corpse so that we can give him a proper and befitting burial,” the sad mother said.
to him, there was no reason why corps members should be attacked because of an election.
“Even Seun did not participate in the election. He was not one of the corps members used for the election, so why should they kill him. They should just release his corpse to us and they should compensate the family,” he said.
Some of the seven corps members killed at the police station, according to one of the Corps Liaison Officer in Bauchi State, were Ukeoma Ikechukwu, Anslem Sylvester Nkwazema, Obinna Okpokiri and Kehinde Adeniyi.
According to the CLO, who pleaded anonymity, because corps members are not allowed to speak to the press, Ukeoma and Nkwazema were chased by an angry mob on April 18 and ran into a police station at Giade.
“Unfortunately, the mob was so large than they were able to overpower the policemen after setting the station on fire and all the corps members ran out. Ukweoma and Nkwazema were beaten to death by the mob.
“Adeniyi, a Muslim, who was identified by one of his pupils, was subsequently beaten to death by the angry mob.
Okpokiri, according to a friend that schooled with him in the United Kingdom, was not only beaten to death, but was burnt after he had been killed.”
The CLO added that Ikechukwu had by 6.48am that day posted a message on his Facebook wall narrating how he nearly escaped being lynched by election riggers after he refused to hand over ballot papers to them during the election on April 16.
“The timely intervention of the police saved me,” Ikechukwu whose Face book name is Ukeoma Aikfavour, had written.
“These CPC supporters would have killed me yesterday, no see threat ooo. Even after forcing under-age voters on me, they wanted me to give them the remaining ballot papers to thumb print. Thank God for the police and I’m happy I could stand for God and my nation. To all corps members who stood despite these threats especially in the North, bravo! Nigeria our change has come,” he added.
On the same Face book page some hours later, a friend named Vivesparkle Emmanuel wrote,
“Please, you all should pray for Aik. As at yesterday, some angry mob were shooting guns around them. They were able to take them later to the nearest police station only for him to call that the mob were threatening to burn down the place. We’ve lost contact with him because his phone has been unreachable. Kindly pray for him and others in the same condition. Thanks.”
But the call for prayers came rather too late as Aik was one of the unfortunate corps members killed by the rioters.
Their deaths have, however, renewed calls for the scrapping of the NYSC as most parents including Ojo, are now calling on the Federal Government to do away with the scheme.
But Seun’s mother said that if government would not scrap the NYSC, it should only post corps members to states within their geo-political zones.
“In Ekiti, we don’t maltreat corps members. We take care of them, we give them free accommodation, if the Hausa people are killing our children, then they should not be posted to the North again. Let them serve in their geo-political zones. But they should please release my son’s corpse so that we can give him a proper and befitting burial,” the grieving mother said.
Story by By SEGUN OLUGBILE
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