Lawyer Who Was Beaten To A Pulp By Soldiers In Festac Explains What Happened.

On April 26th,A Nigerian citizen and Attorney at Law was given the beating of his life and left for Dead by four Nigerian soldiers in Festac town.

The story made headlines a few days back and when it got to me,I asked that the brutalised man tell exactly what happened and this is his narration of how he was almost turned to corned beef by Nigerian Soldiers...He cries for Justice!

''My name is barrister Olajide Sipe. On the 26^th of April, at about 1:30pm, I left my house to buy water for my wife and son beside Thrillers at 4^th avenue, Festac Town. On my way back, after buying the water, I passed through Mobil filling station; which was selling petrol at 23/4^th avenue junction. There was some traffic building up just after the filling station, which I noticed was due to an ‘OP MESA’ soldier that stopped a bus driver on the road and was speaking with him. When I got close to the soldier, without getting down from my vehicle, I politely asked the soldier to instruct the driver of the bus to move a little off the road so as to allow other motorist free passage.

 He then replied by saying: “wetin concern you? Useless man like you”. I then went on to reply by saying: “oga, I nor dey teach you your work, but abeg help us make we fit comot here quick”. Then he left the bus and started walking towards my window, while I was still in the vehicle. I then decided to drive off in order to avoid a being involved in a scene. But before I could move my car a distance, I saw another soldier walking towards my car with a keg (jerrycan), while the first one was still following me. 

I decided to slow down a little as I had gotten to a bend, then suddenly the second soldier started kicking my headlight. While he was at this, the first soldier at the back met up with my car and punctured one of the rear tyres. This was when I sensed trouble brewing and decided to drive away. As I tried driving away, the soldier with the keg smashed my windscreen with the keg in his hand. I continued driving after this, with my eyes on my side mirror. This was when I saw them mounting ‘okada’ bikes along with 2 other soldiers who came out from the side of the road. 

This resulted in four of them chasing me on the bikes they had mounted. By now, I had turned into ‘72 road’ and kept driving straight on. By the time I got to the end of the road, I slowed down and decided to do a u-turn so as to loose them, and gain some distance to enable me go straight home. As I made the u-turn, they rammed into my car, but I still drove on looking at my rear mirror to note their position. This was when I saw one of them going down on one knee to take aim at me. I became perplexed and scared as to why they would want to pursue, harm and even shoot at me. 

The soldier taking aim released the first shot at my car, but I don’t know where it hit. Then he took aim and fired another shot which hit one of my rear tyre. This resulted in me moving on 2 tyres, which led the car to come to a halt. As I tried coming down from my car out of shock, they grabbed me and began to torture me. They hit me with their boots, kicked me, hit me with sticks, stones and the butt of their guns. They tried hard to break my joints and my spine with a fallen NEPA pole, until one of them took a big stone, turned it to the sharp edge and hit it repeatedly on my head. 

It was after this that one of them (light in complexion with dark sunglasses on) brought out a knife to stab me in the chest, but one of them held him back. He then decided to hit me repeatedly with the knife butt. They then went on to vandalize my car by puncturing all my tyres, smashing the front windows and the driver’s side mirror.  

This continued until my vision became blurry due to blood flowing from my head, down my face and into my eyes. It was at this point that an elderly gentleman (who people later identified as a retired air commodore living nearby), who was brave enough to approach them, presented his identity card to them. This made them to quickly board the bikes they came in and flee. Neighbours and passers-by quickly rushed me to a hospital close by, where the doctor on duty attended to me; trying to bring me to full consciousness and stabilize my critical condition. By the time I was able to speak a little, I requested the hospital staff help call my wife and brother, who rushed in almost immediately.

A soldier with a name-tag A. I. Sadi later came to the hospital and introduced himself as the commander of the troops deployed to 7^th Avenue within Festac Town; which the four soldiers belong to. He apologized for the incident and promised to conduct investigations on it. Only to come back a few hours later to say that the four soldiers were not under his command.

A report was lodged at the Festac Police Station soon after, and the officer assigned to the case; named Fidelis, came to view the crime scene and to check on my condition.

I plead with the President Buhari, Governor Ambode, Chief of justice, chief of army staff, Nigerian Police chief, members of press, and every concerned citizen to please join me in crying out for justice. I was almost killed a day before my birthday for doing nothing wrong. 

As a member of the Nigeria Bar Association, I also implore every related personnel to make sure this doesn’t end up being ‘just another case of army brutality’; but to call on every resource and finally put to bed this form of negativity within our society.

I thank God for His mercy and life.

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