An innocent man was hit by stray bullet after Soldiers shot sporadically following the counter attack Aba residents meted out to a soldier at Uratta Junction, Aba, Abia State, who was beating a female trader.
According to eyewitnesses, the soldier who was beaten for assaulting the lady, mobilized his colleagues at Christmary hotel and Onions market and they started shooting sporadically and beating everybody on sight.
Here are photos below;
This is coming few months after the Nigerian army apologised to the family of Abubakar Alhaji, a commercial motorcyclist who was beaten to death by a sergeant, Taiwo Owoeye, a soldier in Lagos.
The victim’s brother, Salihu Mojahid, who witnessed the incident narrated it to the presidential panel investigating rights abuses by the military.
“The Nigerian Army has detained Sgt. Owoeye for murder, we find the matter reprehensible and condemnable,” the Nigerian Army’s counsel, Bola Oyebanji said.
“However, this is a single act which showed that the sergeant was on his own.
“We apologise and sympathise with the family of the deceased,” Mr. Oyebanji said as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria.
The panel, currently sitting in the South-west, is to sit in the six geo-political zones and the Federal Capital Territory from September 11 to November 3.
The head of the panel, Justice Biobel Goodwill also, giving his condolences, told the brother of the deceased “apologies to you and your family for the death of your brother”.
Salihu Mojahid said;
“On February 27, my brother called Abubakar Alhaji, a commercial motorcyclist, took a passenger to Maroko Roundabout beside Myhoung Barracks, Yaba, Lagos.
“He parked at the back of a vehicle and unknown to him someone was in the vehicle, the person in the vehicle reversed and bystanders shouted that a commercial motorcyclist is behind him.
“My brother knocked on the car to alert the owner that he parked behind him, the owner of the car came out and he was Sgt. Taiwo Owoeye.
“Owoeye who was in full military uniform, slapped my brother twice and after he fell down, and he started kicking my brother several times in his stomach while he was on the ground.
“Bystanders tried apologising to him but he refused to listen to them till my brother fell unconscious.
“When my brother became unconscious, he wanted to leave and the bystanders said ‘do you not see the state of the person you have beaten up?
“Sgt. Owoeye told them ‘let him die, even if he dies, nothing will happen’.
“Fellow commercial motorcyclists and military men took him to a hospital in the barracks he was vomiting blood till the next day.
“My brother died on February 28 and the Commandant ordered the arrest of Sergeant Owoeye.”
