Who killed Salumba: Police, Ogun So-Safe Corps or Kidnappers?
Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun
Salumba, Saheeb Adeniyi Adisa, real name, was the pastor who was kidnapped as he returned from a visit to a friend in Yotomi area, in Owode Egbado, Ogun State and was buried in Ibadan, Saturday, 8, July 2023. Then, it was thought that Salumba was killled by the kidnappers who were identified to be of the Fulani stock as they escaped from the pursuit of a team of police and Ogun State So-Safe Corps. But fresh information has emerged that suggests that Salumba may not have fallen to bullets of the kidnappers but the bullets of those men armed by the state to protect him, the police and the Ogun State So-Safe Corps. It is a riddle that the same police is called upon now to resolve.
Incidentally, it was a press release issued by the So-Safe Corps that gave police and the Corps out as the possible killers of the kidnapped victim, A Facebook post by one Felix Mordi quoting a press release by the So-Safe Corps said: "The So-Safe Special Operations Team (SOT) under Owode-Egba zonal command led by ACC Jimoh Rasaki Omoniyi in receiving the distress call swung into action, adding that "the efforts of the Corps yielded positive results as its operatives successfully repelled the kidnappers in an ensuing exchange of gunfire and killed one while others escaped with varying degrees of injuries and had to abandon the victims." The press announcement given in a typical exaggerated police style said when the team of police/ So-Safe Corps received a "distress call" from the scene of the kidnapping, " it quickly" mobilized to the scene, don't mind if the police arrived at the scene of the crime several hours after the criminals have leisurely finished their crimes and left. And how during "a heavy shootout between the kidnappers and the "crack team" of the police, the team dislodged the kidnappers leaving one of them dead while several others escaped with bullets wounds and are still being chased. Usually, as it is in this incident, the announcement will say that the police is on top of its game and the commissioner of police with his titles and the courses he has attended enumerated has determined to rid the state of all criminal-minded-persons warning them to desist from their "dastardly acts." Yet crime continue to deny the nation peace with grave consequence on economic growth.
But in the case of Salumba, it ended that the man whose corpse the So-Safe Corps and the police gave as that of the kidnapper who was killed in a "heavy gun exchange" with it is actually the photograph of the man who had been kidnapped seven days previously on whose behalf family and friends had been negotiating with the kidnappers a ransome to secure his release.
Police claimed that it rushed to the scene of the crime and swooped on the kidnappers and in a gunduel fell one of them. When the news got to the family of the kidnapped victim, who had mounted a search team for their brother, having lost telephone contact with him for two days and later when the photograph of the supposedly dead kidnapper was shown to them, they found out that it was the image of their brother, Pastor Saheeb Adeniyi Adisa. The Corps announcement together with the photograph was sent to the younger brother of the kidnapped victim, Mr. Musliu Bukola Adisa, a retired director of Federal Highways who lives in Abuja.
Mr Musiliu Adisa confirmed that the photograph was that of his kidnapped brother. He travelled to Lagos to join the family search team. A telephone call had come to the chief negotiator with the kidnappers for the release of Salumba from the police and the So-Safe Corps team assuring him that the police had secured the safety of Salumba but he can't be reached on phone. But when Mr. Musiliu Bukola Adisa arrived at the Abule Ori forest where the supposed kidnapper was allegedly felled and obtained a footage of the killing, the man in the footage was that of his brother whom the caller had said was in safe hands and who the police/ So-Safe Corps had claimed was a kidnapper.
According to Mr. Adisa, while a negotiator approached the kidnappers to give them the negotiated ransom of three million naira, but the okada riders she engaged to carry her to the kidnappers hideout refused to enter into the forest because they knew that kidnappers operate there. When the first 'okada rider" refused to enter the forest, the kidnappers demanded that the negotiator get an Hausa speaking okada rider who they can give direction in the Hausa language. She did and the kidnappers gave the instructions to the rider on how to get to their location. But when it got to where the second okada rider must also enter the forest, he also refused to go any further because he was scared. Frustrated and scared, the negotiator who was to deliver the ransom to the kidnappers went back home.
In that delayed process, the kidnappers who had taken Salumba along with them as they went on another mission to raid a Redeemed Christian Church of God branch at Abule Ori in Obafemi Owode Local Government, Ogun state, demobilized their victim to prevent his escape by shooting his foot. According to Mr. Musiliu Adisa, his brother was already dressed-up ready for his release to the negotiator. But when the police/So-Safe Corps began their pursuit, the kidnappers abandoned Salumba in the bush and fled. Salumba who could not walk again because of the bullet wound to his leg crawled out of the forest. When he got out of the bush in the early morning, the community people who had gathered saw him and along with the police team thought he was one of the kidnappers and began to deal machete cuts on him.
Though Salumba pleaded with them that he was not a kidnapper and though he spoke in Yoruba language, his attackers did not believe alleging that "some Yoruba have also joined the Fulani herdsmen to kidnap our children." Already extremely weak because of the torture he had endured for seven days in the hands of the kidnappers, presumably Salumba succumbed to death in the hands of some community youth and perhaps the police. A policeman was seen in a footage holding a machete with which he hit an already dead Salumba in his legs to remove his shoes from his legs after he had been cruelly dragged on the floor, shoved and squeezed into the back of a Hilux pickup van. The shoes easily came off and were put on his body. A youth was also seen in the footage holding a machete which he subsequently passed to a policeman.
Now Mr. Musiliu Adisa is distraught. His brother died out of security neglect as he alleged. He alleges his brother died from machete cuts from the community youths and police and not the bullet of the kidnappers. Moreover, he said he met the body of his brother not in the morgue of the Owode Egba General Hospital in Ogun State where the police took it but outside the morgue. For him, labeling his brother, a chartered accountant who was the General Manager, Finance and Account of VGC Water, Lekki, Lagos, a kidnapper has soiled the good name of his family which it earned in many years of honest living of his progenitors. Mr. Musiliu Adisa wants that stain removed. He also wants the negotiator he described as self-appointed who was the person his brother visited before he was kidnapped to be investigated. He believes that the person might have set-up his brother.
The Police Commissioner in Ogun State to which he had submitted a petition is thinking differently. The police does not think that the negotiator can be involved. Curious watchers of insecurity in Nigeria have questioned why the police usually make exaggerated claims concerning its efficiency in the face of shoddy performance that is so clearly manifest to Nigerians. They think that there cannot be the desired efficiency in the police until the institution is decentralized in a restructured Nigeria and made competent by giving its positions to the competent rather that the connected and dealing with its huge corruption. Until those are done, no public relations effort, especially one that is not based on observable good performance can change the public perception of the police.
Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.