A petitioner, Mr. Elusanmi Kolawole, yesterday told Osun Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Police Brutality, Human Rights Violations and Related Extra-Judicial Killings that he had been spending N15,000 monthly to procure medication to cure the internal injuries sustained during police brutality.

Kolawole, who claimed to have been defrauded of his car by a police officer, said he was beaten to a pulp before the car was taken away to an unknown destination.

He demanded N7 million as compensation to assuage the adverse effects of the incident.

While being cross-examined by the respondent’s counsel, Kolawole said he had been suffering memory lapse owing to the degrees of injuries he sustained from the police assault.

He recalled that one Superintendent Ayuba, a police officer serving in Ogun State then, bundled him out of his house in Osogbo and tortured him from Osogbo to Ilesa.

Kolawole, who approached the panel to seek justice, said the alleged police officer accused him of buying a stolen vehicle, a claim he said the police officer refuted when he presented the documents of the car.

“It is unfortunate that I have been turned to what I am today,” he said.

As you can see, I have been suffering from memory loss due to the incident of police brutality, which I was a victim of.

“What actually happened was that I was in my house that fateful day when I saw about five fully-armed police officers who had come to arrest me. I was beaten mercilessly and forced into the vehicle.

“I was hit repeatedly on the head with different harmful weapons they took along and I was taken to Ilesa, the residence of the person that I sold the vehicle to.

“The injuries I sustained, particularly on the head, have been disturbing me till now to the extent that I hardly remember past occurrences. The ugly incident had caused a lot of damage to the extent that I spent N15,000 every month to buy drugs,” he said.

The chairman of the panel, Justice Akin Oladimeji (rtd), adjourned the case till tomorrow, March 26, 2021, for further hearing.

The petitioner’s counsel, Bidemi Olumide Odutola, expressed confidence in the ability of the panel to dispense justice.

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