One Year After: I spent an hour with Pelumi Onifade’s family. I left with a shattered heart

She’s far from finding closure a year after the death of Pelumi, the 20-year-old journalist who made news headlines in November 2020 after he was reportedly shot and whisked away by Nigerian Police.

Defying the notorious Lagos-Abeokuta expressway traffic, on Friday, October 29, 2021, I took a trip to Aboru, a rural community around Iyana-Ipaja, in the Alimosho local government area of Lagos, to have a chat with Pelumi’s family. Aboru, a Lagos suburb of about 200,000 people, is home to the lower middle class and those at the base of the social ladder. For many years, it suffered government neglect before former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode intervened with road networks, a linking bridge and a health centre.

Pelumi’s father, Olatunde Onifade, an electrician, his mother, a caterer and his younger sister, who just finished her Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE), welcomed me into their apartment. On the sitting room floor are a deck, a DVD player and a 14-inch Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) television, the type common in many homes until the early 2000s when plasma TVs started taking over.

“We just moved in here. That’s why it was a bit difficult giving you a clear description,” Olatunde told me when I eventually arrived at their residence an hour late after missing my way.

Abosede told me their church supported the family to move out of their former apartment “because of the unnecessary attention Pelumi’s death attracts to us.”

Pelumi Onifade Beyond The News Headlines

Pelumi, the eldest and only male of three children, came from a close-knit Christian family who welcomed me into their home and was very hospitable.

By all accounts, Pelumi Onifade, born July 25, 2000, exuded brilliance. He was a sweet, cultured, sharp-witted and very ambitious man who was everybody’s favourite in church, home and school. He lived a triangular life. His usual routine, as I found, was home to church (for fellowship, service and choir/Boys Brigade rehearsals) and school.

When he left the Lagos Baptist Senior Secondary College, Orile-Agege, he took up a teaching job at a primary school, and “when he wanted to leave for the university, the management, students and some parents didn’t want him to leave. They loved him,” his mother told me.

Pelumi understood the financial limitations of his family, and he supported the family when he could.

As he grew older, he became more ambitious and avoided trouble. He didn’t keep friends. There were no negative reports about him, so his family had no reason to always keep an eye on him or subject his choices to scrutiny. They trusted him to make the best choices.

When he told his mother, who was his confidant and closest friend, that his dream was to study mass communication and become a journalist, she didn’t have any reason to question his choice.

“I didn’t understand what Mass Comm means, but whenever I asked him to explain to me, he would tell me: ‘You’ll understand one day, if I explain to you, you won’t understand’. So when I started seeing his works, I started getting a clearer view of what the course is about,” Abosede says.

Although he was offered an admission to study History at Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, Pelumi stayed committed to his dream to pursue a media career.

“He made me so proud when he cleared his WAEC in one sitting, and we did everything possible to raise funds when he wanted to take UTME. He made us proud again by clearing the UTME and got admitted to TASUED that same year,” Abosede told me. “When he gained admission, friends rallied round to support us. Some lent us money to pay his school fees, while others offered support. And God made it easy for us.”

Pelumi was in his second year at TASUED when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the world in 2020, so he chose to intern for Gboah TV, an online media platform owned by the son of their church’s founder.

He joined the team to learn more about media and support his family’s income affected by the lockdown.

“When he saw the situation at home, he decided to support the family during the COVID-19 pandemic,” his mother told me.

In October 2020, pent up anger from the many atrocities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a notorious unit in the Nigeria Police Force, fuelled nationwide EndSARS protests.

“Pelumi was actively involved in the protests as a journalist reporting for Gboah TV,” the immediate past President of TASUED Students Union, Abdulazeez Soneye who led a series of protests to demand justice, told me. “He was the only one who captured on video the moment a politician shot into the air to disperse protesters in Abule-Egba area of Lagos during the End SARS protests.”

He was also seen in a viral photo with comedian Debo ‘Mr Macaroni’ Adebayo at the Ikeja rally.

The End SARS protest was met with brutal force on Tuesday October 20, 2021, when soldiers opened fire on protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos.

The shooting sparked another wave of anger across the country that led to the destruction of public property and massive looting of business places and warehouses stocked with COVID-19 relief palliatives, which ought to have been distributed to the populace but were hoarded.

Although the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) said some of the looted items were a “strategic reserve ahead of a projected second wave of COVID-19,” the citizens wouldn’t have that. It was six months after the lockdown was relaxed, and they believed the palliatives should have been distributed.

Amidst the chaos across the country, authorities deployed armed men to some of the warehouses to chase looters away.

On October 24, 2020, Pelumi was wearing a jacket with ‘Press’ inscription and was with a colleague reporting at a warehouse in Agege where residents, mostly women, said they heard palliatives were stored and were waiting for the distribution.

His father, Olatunde Onifade, told me Pelumi was interviewing one of the women when Police from the Lagos State Environmental and Special Offences Unit (Taskforce) arrived at the scene to disperse the women.

People in the area said Police fired shots to disperse the mob. Pelumi left his shoe at the scene in the ensuing melee as he ran for safety, leaving his colleague.

“His colleague told us while he was searching for Pelumi, he saw Police carry him into their van and take him away,” Olatunde told me. “I saw a video where a trader in the area was saying the boy the Police took away was shot.”

“When they brought his shoe home, the first report I heard was that he was arrested. I didn’t know he was shot,” his mother told me.

His father, who was out of Lagos on a business trip at the time, said when Pelumi’s boss got to the scene, the Police didn’t allow him to have access to his son in their van before taking him away.

Joab Bamiro, the founder of Gboah TV, declined to speak with Neusroom. He directed me to the family and their lawyer.

For more than a week, they searched at different police stations across Lagos; there were no records of his arrest there. A missing person flyer was shared on the internet asking Nigerians to help locate him.

“There’s no police station I didn’t visit in Lagos. They all claimed they didn’t have any record of his arrest,” Abosede says.

How his family heard about his death

Pelumi’s father told me that more than a week after his disappearance and denial by the Police, “a Police source hinted one of our church members that the description of the boy we were searching for fits the identity of one boy who died among those arrested in Agege and his body had been deposited at the Ikorodu General Hospital mortuary.”

Acting on this tipoff, his mother told me some church members went to Ikorodu, 30km away from Agege, where Pelumi was arrested and found his corpse at the mortuary.

The Press jacket he was wearing at the time of the attack had been removed, and the church wristband he had on his wrist before his death was the first symbol used to identify him.

“It was the wristband that some of the church members saw and were able to identify his corpse quickly,” Abosede told me. She also wore the wristband when I visited that Friday.

The day his body was found, Abosede and Olatunde became another parent who had lost a child to Police brutality.

“Those 10 days we didn’t see him were the most terrible moments of my life. My heart was shattered,” his heartbroken mother told me as she said she is confident her only son “could have survived if the Police didn’t take him away after shooting him.”

Report of Pelumi’s death stumped many Nigerians.

“The Police are currently investigating the matter and have assured the management, the family and community that the investigation will be thorough and swift,” Gboah TV said in a statement on November 3, 2020.

It’s been a year, and there appears to be no investigation. What has been most devastating for the family is that his case was never treated at the Lagos End SARS panel throughout the 12 months the panel sat.

I sent a message to Lagos Police spox, Ade Ajisebutu, on WhatsApp on Sunday, October 31, 2021. I called him on Monday, November 1, 2021. He’s yet to respond to my request for an update about the Police’s promise to investigate Pelumi’s death.

News coverage and eyewitness accounts indicted the Police.

In the one year since Pelumi’s death, the Police has been accused of more killings. His death remains unsolved, and his family remains in misery, compounded by the government’s refusal to release his corpse to them for burial.

When the Lagos State government set up the End SARS Panel of Inquiry in October 2020 to hear cases of Police brutality, the family had high hopes that it would bring them justice. They couldn’t afford the service of a lawyer, but their church hired one for them.

“We attended the sessions from February till October, but Pelumi’s case was never called. At the last sitting we attended on Friday, October 15, our lawyer had a heated argument with the panel Registrar when they didn’t call our case, but the Registrar told him that he would notify us when our case would be treated,” Olatunde says. “To our surprise, a journalist called our lawyer that Pelumi’s case was called at the final sitting on Monday, October 18, 2021, because the panel would not sit on Tuesday, October 19, a public holiday. We were not notified of a sitting on that day because ordinarily, the panel didn’t sit on Mondays.”

At its final sitting, the panel awarded N128.2 million as compensation to 24 victims of police brutality, but Pelumi was not one of them.

As I found, the conventional idea of justice now looks like a ruse to the parents. Now they just want to have their late son’s body and give him a befitting burial “so that his soul can rest.”

“We’ve been asking for the release of his corpse since last year, and up till now, it has not been released to us,” his father says.

“We were informed his body has been transferred from Ikorodu to LASUTH in Ikeja for autopsy,” his mother says. “In February, they told us to do a DNA test to identify him, we did that, but they are yet to release his body to us.”

In June 2021, Prof John Obafunwa, a forensic pathologist, told the End SARS panel that the coroner’s office had conducted an autopsy on 99 bodies. He didn’t mention the names of the victims.

I sent an email to the Office of the Chief Coroner of Lagos State, Justice Mojisola Dada, to confirm why Pelumi’s corpse has not been released. They are yet to respond.

I never got to meet Pelumi, but his story mirrors that of many young Nigerians.

“His case was treated as a typical Nigerian case. When you’re nobody, some people will frustrate your effort to get justice,” Soneye told me. “It’s saddening that after a year, there’s no justice and consolation for the family. It’s a memory I hate to talk about.”

The accounts of family members and schoolmates confirmed that Pelumi was a humble and ambitious young man who just wanted the best for himself and his family. He was ticking the right boxes on his way to escape the hard life and change the story of his family.

“He used to ask me, ‘what are the things a man must do to survive in life?’” Abosede told me. “I assured him that he was on the right track since he was already in the university, and once he becomes a graduate, he’ll start working, and things will begin to fall in place gradually.”

But that would never happen.

His mother told me her hopes became dim after Pelumi’s life was put to an abrupt end.

“Since the incident happened, I’ve been falling sick. My family thought it was over,” she says. “Whenever I sit, I weep. Losing a pregnancy alone is devastating, not to mention a grown-up child that we had hoped would lift the glory of the family.”

“Every parent who has raised a child to university level becomes confident that the future and their old age is looking secure. Well, we leave everything to God,” her voice went from hushed to sombre and tears dropped.

In her eyes, I saw the agony of a mother whose joy was taken away, and despite how hard I fought it, I couldn’t hold back tears either as I spoke with Abosede. My eyes blinked, and I felt something drop. It was tears.

She showered me with anecdotes from the Bible, the book that has been her source of comfort. “Whoever is in Christ has everything,” she said. “God is the judge of all; he’ll judge those who killed my son.”

It’s been hard for the family to find closure. The idea of asking men to bottle in their emotions has forced the father to keep his grief away from his wife.

“It’s been very hard living without Pelumi. Sometimes I just leave the room at midnight for the sitting room to press my phone because I don’t want the mother to see me thinking,” he told me. “I don’t want to multiply her trauma with my feelings.” Olatunde smiled as he spoke with me, but I could feel the pain hidden behind his smile. He has bottled up so much pain.

Pelumi’s friendliness, honesty and humility, coupled with the circumstances leading to his death, left many heartbroken.

His younger sister told me she lost a confidant in Pelumi, and it’s been difficult dealing with the loss.

At their home on Friday, Abosede said she remembered Pelumi that morning just before I called to inform them I’ll be visiting.

“When he was alive, whenever I looked at him, I felt fulfilled and thankful to God that I was able to raise a grown man like him. But now, he’s no more.”

She was eagerly looking forward to his exploits. He was full of potential, and “I had thought he would be the one to change our story because he was so dedicated to his dreams.”

Soneye told me it’s a memory he hates to talk about because he is saddened that there’s no justice and consolation for the family after a year.

After an hour at the Onifade’s residence, I left with the conviction that Pelumi shouldn’t just be a news item.

It’s been over a year, his killing remains unsolved, and his body still lies in the morgue.

I left the house devastated and thinking, ‘how could such a terrible fate befall such a pleasant family?’

The family needs help to amplify their voice and get justice.