A secret autopsy conducted in Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBUTH) has confirmed that officers of the Bauchi State Police Command killed Dauda Danladi after hitting his head with a rod.
FIJ had reported that Danladi, 33, was arrested and subsequently killed by the police officers who paraded innocent citizens in the Yelwa Tsakani area of Bauchi State on July 8, 2021.
Eyewitness accounts revealed that the police, in an attempt to whisk Danladi away in their van, hit him with a rod on his head and that led to his death. Substantiating the claim, an autopsy secretly conducted by the police on December 7 indicated that Danladi died of intracranial haemorrhage, which is acute bleeding in the skull or brain.
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Meanwhile, the police had claimed that Danaladi died of asthma in a hospital. In a press statement after his death, Ahmed Wakil, the Bauchi police spokesman, said the police, during a raid at Yelwa Tsakani, received an emergency call that he had slumped and was gasping for breath, and took him to ATBUTH where he died.
Though the autopsy also revealed that there was blood in Danaladi’s lungs, Ifeoma Okoye, a professor of radiology at the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) and University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu (UNTH), told FIJ that a blood clot in the lungs is not a sign of asthma.
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A Lagos-based pathologist, who asked not to be named, also told FIJ there were chances eyewitness accounts of Danladi’s death were true.
“If someone was severely hit on the head as claimed by eyewitnesses, or any part of the body, It will certainly hinder blood flow which inevitably will form a clot,” the pathologist said.
FIJ placed several calls to Wakil, but his telephone line was not reachable. He had also not responded to a text message sent to him at press time.
This report was produced through the ‘You Matter in this Matter’ Project being implemented by YouthHubAfrica, Onelife Initiative, Cedar Seed Foundation and FIJ, with support from Voice Nigeria.
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