A Nigerian widow has narrated a painful story of how officers of the defunct SARS unit of the Nigeria Police Force killed her husband and advised her to marry another man.
The mother of one, Mrs. Chidinmma Precious Edozieuno who is now a widowed recounted the incident before the Anambra Judicial panel on activities of the unit.
According to her, SARS operatives took away her husband in 2017 after he returned from Benin Republic to see her and their baby.
She said officers of the Special Anti-robbery Squad who took her husband away accused him of being a kidnapper and then advised her to kiss him goodbye.
She petitioned the panel and prayed the panel to give her reasonable compensation for the loss of her husband and properties.
In her words, “We were in our house in Awka that fateful day in August 2017 when some gunmen broke into our house and took my husband. They also took away almost all our household properties and told me to go and marry another man that this one is as good as dead.
“They said my husband was a kidnapper. I did not even know where they came from, and at first, I didn’t even know they were policemen.
“With the help of a friend, who is a police officer, we started looking for my husband. He took me to many police stations to know if they had him, but none of them had him. We went to Awkuzu SARS office, and that was where I saw three of the men who came and arrested my husband.
“I took a lawyer and we went to court. It was in court that the counsel representing SARS told us that my husband was dead. They said he was a kidnapper. I dated my husband for a long time before we got married. He is not a kidnapper. I lived in Benin and that was where we knew each other. I later relocated to Nigeria. My husband is from Aguleri,” she said.
A refrigerator, television set, a generator set, laptop, iPhone and Wifi were some of the items she said were collected from her home on that fateful day her husband was picked up.
Chidinmma pleaded with the judicial panel to give her considerable compensation for her husband who is already dead and whose life can not be restored. She also demanded that the body of her husband be given to her for burial.
Rtd Justice V.N Umeh, Chairman of the panel, assured Edozieuno that the petition was well-received and would be duly investigated after which she would be re-invited.