On November 24, 2020, Emenike Bakosi was sitting in front of his shop at Agodi Gate, Ibadan, Oyo State, when he saw people running. He did not know why people ran, but he immediately packed his goods, locked his shop and breezed out of the area.

After leaving the scene, he stopped by a shop to purchase a sachet of water, but what followed was the deafening echoes of a gun. A member of the Oyo State Security Task Force, Operation Burst, had shot him in the head in an attempt to calm a riot.

The next time he opened his eyes, he was lying on a bed at the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan. By this time, days had turned into weeks, and the right side of his body had become paralysed.

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PILLAR OF THE FAMILY

Before Bakosi was shot in the head, he was a man who catered for his family. His shop was always filled with fashionable clothes, and he was an able-bodied man who had no sign of deformity.

Veronica Bakosi, his wife, described him as the pillar of the family. “But since they shot my husband, he has not been able to do anything,” she told FIJ. “We have sold everything we have, and I now have to sell singlets and caps by the roadside, just to help my family.”

When this reporter spoke to Bakosi, he was incoherent, and he stammered from time to time. Other times, he almost broke down in tears, and a loud silence punctuated his words.

When Veronica is at her stall, her eldest child, a 13-year-old who dropped out of school due to the family’s financial reality, watches over Bakosi.

The Bakosi’s family is so poor that it now resides in an uncompleted church building.

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OYO STATE GOVERNMENT ABANDONS BAKOSI

On March 23, 2021, Bakosi’s family, with the help of Babatunde Oni, the family’s lawyer, presented the issue in suit No. OYJPPB/081 before the Oyo State judicial panel of inquiry on Police brutality, widely referred to as the Oyo #EndSARS panel, but nothing has been done since then.

The family provided documents that served as evidence that Bakosi went through multiple surgeries and spent about N3.5 million on his health before he could leave the hospital.

“But since we presented the case before the panel, nothing has been heard from the state government. He is still going for weekly treatment in UCH and he is partially disabled,” Oni told FIJ.

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FIJ tried to reach Operation Burst via a phone number they displayed on Google, but the respondent said he no longer worked with the security unit and could not provide a contact of anyone working there.