WHO killed seyi Fasere, the part-time 400-level Business Administration student of Ekiti State University (EKSU)? He was killed last Thursday on his way to school. The police, the bereaved family alleged yesterday, killed him.
In tears, his parents, Mr and Mrs Joseph Fasere told reporters in their Ilupeju-Ekiti home that they don’t believe the police story linking their son to a bank robbery.
They said the late Fasere was returning to school in Ado-Ekiti, capital of the state in the evening that fateful Thursday, when he was killed.
According to them, they got wind of a robbery late that Thursday through a neighbour, Mrs. Victoria Bobola Adewuyi, who said she boarded the same bus from Ilupeju with the deceased before the vehicle ran into a gang of robbers somewhere close to Oye.
Since it was late, Mrs Fasere said, they could not establish contact with the deceased until the next day when they traced him to the police station in Oye where, they found his dead body.
The mother said: “When we got to the station, we saw and identified the corpse with his hands tied behind him. I told them (the police) that the boy was my son. I was surprised when they (the police) told me that he (Fasere) was among the gang of robbers who attacked a bank in Oye.
“We opposed their claim and told them that my son just left home where he came to collect his school fees as his second semester examination would be starting next week. He left home with about N100,000.”
At that point, she said: “They (police) then descended on me and his father with blows and all manners off objects, saying that we were the ones who sent the boy to be throwing grenades at them.”
“Thereafter, we were thrown behind the counter where we were kept until about 6pm when they released us to go home and ordered to come back following day.”
Mrs. Fasere said a policeman popularly called, ‘Akobi-Esu’ (devil’s first child), had told them that he killed Seyi with “a single shot” after being established as a member of the robbery gang.
She said: “My son was killed at the police station on Friday morning and taken to the bush to make people believe that he was a robber.
“It is sad for the police to have caught Seyi where he was hiding, tied his hands and detained him from Thursday till Friday before shooting him just to create the impression that they had caught a robber. They even spread the news in town that he was a member of a robbery gang. But the second day, a heavy rain fell and one of the robbers, who sustained injury during the raid was washed out of the culvert where he was hiding, almost dying.
“When interrogated by the police in the presence of the people, the man confessed to being a member of the gang and that Seyi was not among them.
Mrs Adewuyi, 72, said when the robbers shot at the bus, all the passengers alighted and ran into the bush.
“When I returned to Ilupeju later in the day, I asked if Seyi had also come back. They said he had not,” the septuagenarian said.
The Police Public Relations Officer of the state, Mr Victor Olu-Babayemi said Seyi’s body was discovered in the bush the following day, when his men combed the robbery scene.
He said: “One of the robbers who was shot and arrested said he could not identify Seyi because he was not among the team that attacked the station. But he confessed to being part of the team who attacked the bank.”
“He also disclosed that their gang leader recruited them separately. So, we do not know if Seyi was one of the robbers or he was caught in the crossfire. But we are still investigating”, Olu-Babayemi said.
The robbers, who attacked second-generation bank made away with an undisclosed sum of money.
They were said to have own the bank’s entrance with a dynamite. It was, however, not confirmed if there were casualties in the attack.
