The Idiroko command of the Nigeria Customs Service has absolved itself from the recent killing of a man, who was said to be a commercial motorcycle rider (okada) during a face- off with youths of Koko town in Ogun state.
The deceased; Timothy Ezekiel was allegedly shot at by Customs operatives during a raid at the village to burst a rice smuggling syndicate.
Following the death, a petition was written to the Ogun State Police command in which it was alleged that the deceased was killed during a raid on February 26, 2014 by customs officers from the Idiroko command
The Idiroko command of the Nigeria Customs Service has absolved itself from the recent killing of a man, who was said to be a commercial motorcycle rider (okada) during a face- off with youths of Koko town in Ogun state.
The deceased; Timothy Ezekiel was allegedly shot at by Customs operatives during a raid at the village to burst a rice smuggling syndicate.
Following the death, a petition was written to the Ogun State Police command in which it was alleged that the deceased was killed during a raid on February 26, 2014 by customs officers from the Idiroko command
The petition which was sighted by our correspondents and which was signed by Chief Shina Ogunyale, counsel for the Koko community, also accused customs operatives of several extrajudicial killings in border communities such as : Ilashe, Ajegunle, Ihunbo, Ogosa, Ajilete along the Idiroko road.
In the petition, it was alleged that: “The teams in three Hilux vans were led by one Mr. Ajao on that fateful day before another team that was led by one Mr. Ade joined them, making it four teams all together.
“Before the arrival of the fourth team, the three teams had been shooting indiscriminately into the air to scare people from approaching a house where the officers had gone to recover contraband goods. The house in question is far away from the family house of the deceased where he was killed by one Mr. Ahmed, a member of the fourth team.
“The deceased was moving his children and his 80-year-old father (Pa. Ezekiel) into their family house. It was at that point that Ahmed shot the deceased right in the front of his aged father.
“Immediately after Timothy’s murder, the teams left Koko town, abandoning the contraband goods they came for. Timothy is a gentleman; he was not a smuggler and was not at the scene of the customs’ operation.”
But, in a reaction to the petition, the spokesman for the command; Mr Chike Ngige told Shipping Position Daily last week that the deceased was a known and notorious smuggler.
Insisting that the late Ezekiel was an unrepentant smuggler, the spokesman asked: “Was he on okada, was he riding okada when he was killed, was eh a smuggler or an okada rider?
He added that the okada riders within the communities are always using their motorcycles to smuggle rice. He explained that, since the Customs have continued to thwart all efforts to use vehicles to illegally freight rice into the country through unapproved routes, the villagers have resorted to the use of motor bikes.
Speaking specifically on the February 24 incident, Ngige stated that, customs officers actually went to the community to dislodge the smugglers and seize the smuggled rice.
“On sighting our men, the youths mobilized and started using all manners of dangerous weapons including guns to chase our men away, they were almost 100 youths”.
‘To repel the attack, our men fired into the air, they (the village youths) were also shooting, the man was killed in the gun battle. No one could say which gun killed the man.
However, life has been lost, we commiserate with the family and the villagers on the death of their person. We are waiting for things to calm down before we go there or invite the family”
He however insisted that the deceased Ezekiel was a smuggler.
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