Pelumi Onifade: Family demands release of 20-year-old journalist’s corpse one year after killing
The parents of Pelumi Onifade, the 20-year-old journalist reportedly killed by Police during the End SARS crisis in October 2020, have appealed to the Lagos State Government to release his corpse for burial.
A year after he was killed, Pelumi, who was an intern journalist with Gboah TV, an online media platform, is yet to get justice. His case was also not treated at the End SARS Judicial Panel of Enquiry set up by the state government to probe cases of police brutality.
After the shooting of End SARS protesters at the Lekki toll gate on October 20, 2020, an irate mob went berserk across the country, destroying public property and looting business places and warehouses stocked with COVID-19 relief palliatives, which ought to have been distributed to the populace but were hoarded.
Pelumi, a 200-level History student of Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Ijebu-Ode, was covering an attack on a government facility in Agege, said to be housing COVID-19 palliatives, when he was reportedly shot and taken away by the Police on October 24, 2020.
The Police denied multiple eyewitnesses’ accounts confirming that they took Pelumi away after shooting him at the scene. His body was later found more than a week later at the mortuary of Ikorodu General Hospital, 30km away from Agege, where he was attacked.
Since then, his parents Olatunde and Abosede Onifade, said they’ve been making efforts to get justice and also recover his body for burial. They spoke with Neusroom on October 29, 2021 at their Lagos residence.
“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 told Neusroom’s Michael Orodare.
In November 2020, the Lagos state government, through the office of the Chief Coroner, issued a public notice calling on families to identify missing persons at the Lagos mortuary and claim their bodies.
The newspaper notice signed by the Chief Coroner, Justice Mojisola Dada, read: “This is to notify the General Public that the Chief Coroner of Lagos State, Hon Justice M. A. Dada (Mrs.) pursuant to Section 15, Coroner’s System Law of Lagos State, 2015 the Pathology Team would want all those who have lost loved ones between 19th – 27th October 2020 (that is, next-of-kin of the victims) to provide relevant information that would assist the identification exercise.”
Pelumi’s mother, Abosede Onifade, said, “we were informed his body had been transferred from Ikorodu to LASUTH in Ikeja for autopsy. 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.”
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.
The family who has lost hope in getting justice for their slain son said they just want to recover his body and lay him to rest.
