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Rising toll in Lagos killing fields
THE four-year-old girl, Uche, her voice coloured with her worry and fear said to her mother: "Mummy, I was told Esther's mummy has gone to heaven. She went to work and went to heaven from there leaving Esther and her daddy behind.
"Please, do not make daddy cry by going to heaven. Do you promise?"
Caught unawareness by her daughter's poignant plea, the woman quickly pulled the little girl to herself, and in a voice choked with love, comforted Uche, promising not to leave them behind and go to heaven as Esther's mother had done.
The woman's eyes misted over as she held the child, remembering that "going to heaven", was how Uche and the other children of their neighbours were told of Esther's mother's death.
Little Uche did not want her mother "going suddenly to heaven" as had 30-year-old Mrs. Clementina Saduwa, their ground floor neighbour who was killed on the Apongbon Bridge, Lagos in circumstances that still remained unclear on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at about 9.30 p.m.
The woman, an electrical engineer with an international telecommunications firm in Victoria Island, Lagos, was killed by assailants, none of whom has been arrested and under circumstances the husband, Victor, also an engineer, finds intriguing and most unsatisfactory.
After being told his wife died as a result of injuries she sustained when she was attacked and her head pierced with a sharp metal, Victor was confounded to learn that doctors removed bullets from his dear wife's body.
Two weeks after the death of his wife, Victor is still groping for answers to questions he knows their two-year old daughter, Esther, will ask when she grows up.
The young widower's pain has been exacerbated rather than soothed by the seeming insensitivity and unwillingness by officials of the company where late Clementina worked to tell him the full facts of the matter.
For example, not only did it take his wife's colleague in South Africa to tell him of her death; the driver of the official car who must have witnessed what transpired seems to be shielded by the company.
The Apongbon area in the highly commercial Lagos Central Business District is not the only part of this mega-city of over 15 million people that has been stained with the blood of the innocent, allegedly murdered by hoodlums, assassins or plain armed robbers.
The Papa Ajao area of Mushin, Iyana-Oba to Okokomaiko on the Lagos-Badagry international highway as well as Isolo, all in the Lagos mainland, were at the weekend theatres of violence, which all put together led to the death of about six persons.
Residents had begun preparing to wind up activities for the day, Saturday, when, at about 8.30 p.m., death riding in a red Honda car, struck.
An eyewitness, Mr. Babatunde Ogunyemi who spoke with The Guardian, said: "Four armed men stormed the area around 8.00 p.m. in a red Honda car, driving around the community with confidence, shooting sporadically at innocent persons walking along the streets or even into crowds where people are gathered".
Another eyewitness at Oye Junction where one person was shot dead and many injured, said: "We were all hanging around to play Lotto popularly called baba ijebu, when these guys came out in a red car and pointed their guns at us.
"Everybody scattered, running for our dear lives. But it was rather too late for one of us who the bullet hit on the chest and he died immediately. About three others were also injured on the legs and hands".
From Oye Junction the gunmen went to Oloruntoyin Junction still in the Papa Ajao area.
Their indiscriminate shooting seriously injured a woman in advanced state of pregnancy, Mrs. Maria Oyenuga.
One security guard, identified simply as Mallam Nurudeen, who was on duty guarding a house located on the street, was shot dead.
His friends and relatives who spoke with The Guardian described the late Nurudeen as a gentle and kind man who worked very hard to make ends meet.
His younger brother, Sule, with whom he lived under the same roof said: "It was a serious occurrence, when these people came.
"Nobody could wait to see what was happening. I was standing besides Nuru at the time, but the next thing I heard was his shout for help until he gave up the ghost.
"Well, I have buried my brother. Let the gangsters live forever".
Another of the victims was reported to have come to visit his uncle to tell him about the preparations for his wedding.
His relatives, yesterday, left to retrieve his body from the mortuary for burial.
A woman in the compound, who preferred anonymity, said she did not know the name of the victim.
"He does not live with us. He only came in on that Saturday to inform his uncle about his proposed wedding before he met his death", she said.
According to her, the man lived in Alagbado area of the state.
"This is an ungodly act and the perpetrators must not go unpunished, either on this earth or in the hereafter because they have really tormented our lives and killed innocent ones", said the woman
Besides, for the fortunate Mrs. Maria Oyenuga, a nine-month pregnant woman who was shot on the legs, it was another story to tell. Luckily, she is presently responding to treatment at a private hospital in the area.
According to Mr. Seun Oyenuga, the husband of Maria, he said that she was sitting outside in a kiosk located close to late Nuru's shop.
"On seeing the well-armed gunmen, she, along with her two sisters, ran into the kiosk and lay on the ground.
"But the gangsters heartlessly sprayed the kiosk with several rounds of gunshots, during which my wife was hit on her two legs".
Seun said four bullets had been removed at the hospital where he took her to, while another was still lodged in her thigh.
Residents suspect the killers were the same marauders who visited Olomowewe area of Papa-Ajao in a same car few days before and killed two persons. In the first visit, the fiends injured about five others.
The armed men claimed to have come for a notorious miscreant called Oji who seems to have disappeared into thin air.
Leaving Papa Ajao, the gunmen struck at Isolo killing two people at the gate of the housing estate. The victims were waiting to board a bus.
Spokesman for the Lagos State Police Command, Superintendent Olubode Ojajuni, confirmed the incident and explained that the case was being investigation.
He stressed that the police could not really say whether the armed men were robbers or not, because "we have not got information of any robbery incident in that area. But we shall get to the root of the matter and bring the culprits to book", he assured.
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