A woman, Rita Okungbowa, who appeared before the Edo State Judicial Panel of Inquiry for victims of SARS and related abuses, has asked the panel for N20 million compensation for the alleged death of her husband in the hands of the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad, (SARS).
She had told the panel that it has been eight years since the operatives of the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad, (SARS), invaded their house and whisked her husband away and his whereabouts has remained unknown to her.
Mrs. Okungbowa told the panel that her husband, a Bini movie director, Prince Osayande Okungbowa was tagged a kidnapper and was taken away by the men of the disbanded SARS and that every effort made to know which of the prisons he has been kept has proven abortive, noting that even when she displayed his photograph before other inmates, they all denied seeing person like him.
Mrs. Okungbowa told the panel that having waited till date, she was left with no option than to conclude that he may have been killed by the men of the disbanded SARS.
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According to her “On the 12 day of September, 2012, the SARS came to my own house, and picked my husband, they alleged him to be a kidnapper.
“My mother-in-law and I went to the State Criminal Investigation Department, and immediately I mentioned the name of my husband, they drove us away. They did not allow us to see him.
“The next day, we also came, they did not allow us to also see him.
“So, one of the police officers then told us that they have taken him to the court and thereafter, to the prison.
“I asked which of the prison, they said the white house (that is the maximum Correctional Centre at Sapele road), we went there, we did not see him, we went back to the station, but they later referred us to Oko Correctional Centre, and we did not see him there.
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“So, I decided to take a lawyer, and when we got to the station, the OC then asked, who is in charge of the matter, they told us one Sergeant Esezobo was the Investigating Police Officer, IPO.
“When we asked for the said Esezobo, they said he has gone to the carteen and we went to the carteen and immediately he saw us, he ran away.
“So I have been going to the police station to search for him (my husband) and I have not set my eyes on him for the past eight years and because of that, I decided to approach the panel so that they can help me ask the disbanded SARS where they kept my husband.
“It is now eight years and some months”.
The distraught woman pleaded with the panel to compel the SARS to compensate her to enable her give her children a better life.
“The panel should help me to tell them to provide my husband if he is still alive and if he is no more, the panel should compell them to come and settle me.
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“They should pay me N20million because I have been passing through hard times. Look at my two kids, they have not been going to school for a very long time.
“In fact, even house rent, I can’t pay. I sleep in the church, Celestial Church of Christ, that is where I normally stay because there is no money to rent a house.
“I don’t have anything doing, I go out to wash people’s clothes just to survive, is that not painful?
“They should settle me with N20million so that I can start a good business and to also take my children back to good school”, she said.
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