How Onokpite was killed – Families

By EmmaAmaize
WARRI— Onokpite and Ighomrore families of Okpe and Uvwie local government areas in Delta State have given their own account of how their son, gubernatorial candidate of Citizens Popular Party, CPP, in the last gubernatorial elections in the state, Chief Ogbe Onokpite was killed by the police in Warri, weekend.

The families, in a petition by their lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, to the Inspector-General of Police, dated November 28, said the story that Onokpite was shot while escaping from the police was a complete fallacy.

They said the Police killed him in cold blood.

In the petition, copied President Goodluck Jonathan, National Human Rights Commission and others, Keyamo said: “It is our brief that Chief Ogbe Onokpite (born 38 years ago), candidate of Citizens Popular Party in April 26 general elections in Delta State was lodging at a hotel called Beeland Hotel, situated at Orhuwhorun in Udu Local Government Area, Delta State when men of the Nigeria Police attached to the Police Area Command, Warri (in the company of other plain cloth unidentified persons) stormed the hotel to arrest Chief Ogbe Onokpite.

“On arrival at the said hotel, the police ordered the receptionist on duty at the hotel to show them the room where Onokpite was lodging. Out of extreme fear, the receptionist obeyed and took the policemen to Ogbe’s room and he was immediately arrested and brought out (to the open still within the hotel premises) and shot in the leg.

“He was then carried out of the hotel premises (still alive) in a vehicle, bearing the inscription of the Nigeria Police, Area Command, Warri, to the Police Station at Warri where he was again shot in other more delicate parts of his body and left to bleed to death.

“The attached photo-graphs speak volume as to the barbaric and dastard murder without trial of Onokpite in the hands of men of the Nigeria Police under the watchful eyes of the Area Commander in Charge of the Policemen serving the Delta Central District of Delta State.”

He said: “Onokpite, like any other citizen of Nigeria, is presumed innocent until proved guilty.

“The Onokpite family is urgently requesting for a coroner’s inquest to be made in order to obtain the autopsy report and a full criminal investigation report of the murder of an innocent citizen.”

“Need we say that Chief Ogbe Onokpite has a right to life guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and nothing in this Constitution justifies extra-judicial killing of any person no matter the offence he may have committed.

“It is in the light of the foregoing that we are calling on you to employ your good offices to unravel and bring to book the officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force involved in this illegal killing of

The lifeless body of Ogbe Onokpite has been dumped at the morgue in the Central Hospital Warri, Delta State.”