<div class="bt_bb_wrapper">In the wake of his SARS experience, Christian Okeke is convinced that some members of the now-disbanded unit were “retired criminals.”
One Sunday morning in May 2020, Christian Okeke strode to a spot at Urban Girls Secondary School, Ekwulobia, in the southeastern Nigerian state of Anambra. 
He had parked his car there the night before. 
Yet all he could see now was an empty patch of grass. The car was gone.
What had happened to the 30-year-old mechanic’s car?
Well, a neighbour had an answer. At about 10 p.m. the night before, Christian’s neighbour claimed he saw an officer of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) hotwiring the car.
The next day, Christian went to the SARS office. Upon getting there, he saw his car. He asked to know why the SARS officers had taken his car. 
They said they had found a bag containing Indian hemp in the car, and that they suspected the car was being used for armed robbery operations. 
They then asked Christian to pay before they could let him drive the car home. 
“I was shocked by the accusation of armed robbery,” Christian says.
In Ekwulobia, SARS officers are dubbed “criminals” because of how often they arrest young, innocent people.
The officers openly ask their victims to pay their way out or risk being killed. 
SARS officers are said to come around at least once every two weeks to make many arrests.
“When I told the officers that I did not have any money, they said they would have to ‘do their job’. That was when they pushed me into a cell. They tried to intimidate me and said I was stubborn,” Christian says.
“They asked me to make a statement. I told them I did not have anything to write because I did not know the crime I had committed. After some time, they asked me how much I had on me and I told them I had 1,000 naira. They said I was not serious.”
Before the SARS officers shoved Chrisitian into the cell and collected his phone, he managed to call his brother, whom he asked to inform his friend, a police officer named Dennis,  that he was on the verge of being locked up.
Dennis, whose car Christian usually repaired, called and persuaded the SARS officers to release Christian. But this was after the officers had collected the nearly 12,000 naira Christian had on him. 
The menace of SARS officers is an old tale, dating back to the early 2000s. The police unit, which was created to combat armed robbery and kidnapping, became synonymous with extrajudicial killings, kidnapping, extortion and torture. 
“I remember the officers, after they had brought me out of the cell, asked me to buy them drinks. I wondered why they would ask me to buy them drinks even after they took my money for a crime I did not commit,” Christian says.
“I will never forget my SARS story. I still can’t explain how they managed to take the car to the station because I remember it was locked. Those gun-weirdling operatives are nothing but retired criminals.”
Christian continues: “Some of them kill with reckless abandon. They victimize innocent citizens, and if you refuse to give them what they ask for, they make you suffer. It is an institution that deserved to be dissolved a long time ago.”
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“Retired Criminals”

<div class="bt_bb_wrapper">By: Banjo Damilola
The earlier parts of this series showed how Kaka, the notorious political thug from the Lagos State slum of Ajegunle, attacked protestors in a manner that reflected his existing pattern of human rights abuse and violation.
This final installment looks at the stories of three people who died as a result of the Kaka-led assault on protesters. It is neither extensive nor exhaustive, as some sources declined interviews for fear of being targeted, and some of the deceased were untraceable. These three victims are those this reporter was independently able to trace and verify. 
Onyenkachukwu Francis ¨Akube¨ Ajaero
Onyenkachukwu Ajaero, 30, was popular in Ajegunle, not by his real name, but his alias &#8211; Akube Last Card. He sold fairly used clothes, which is how he got the first part of his nickname, Akube &#8211; a colloquial term for fairly used clothings. 
Everyone who attended his funeral seemed to agree that he was a happy young man who went about his business with so much excitement. 
Akube´s brother, Augustine, remembers him fondly. “My brother was very enterprising, very nice and responsible,¨ he says. ¨In his young life, he made a lot of progress in his business. He sold fairly used clothes and was very popular. He was about to get married. He was just shot.”
The last time Augustine spoke with his late brother, Akube, was hours before he got the call of his death. Next he heard, Akube had been shot and was bleeding to death in a tricycle. 
On Tuesday, October 20, 2020, Akube opened his store as he did everyday, even during the protests. Then, the Governor Sanwo-Olu announced a curfew. 
By midday, Augustine remembers hearing gunshots from a friend’s shop at Baale street as the protest intensified in Ajegunle. He says he called his two other brothers, including Akube, to warn them not to join the protest or to leave the house. 
His instruction to Akube was simple: “lock your shop and go home”.
“I knew it was going to turn to something else,” Augustine says of the protest and how tense Ajegunle had become. “At about a few minutes to 5pm, my younger sister rushed in to say Akube had been shot. She said he was bleeding. Some people took him to Tolu Medical, but he was not admitted, maybe because of cash.”
Tolu Medical Centre denied receiving any #EndSars casualties. 
Akube was taken to two other hospitals, still inside the tricycle, still bleeding, yet he wasn´t attended to. No first aid, no admission. For four futile hours, his life slowly slipped out of him.
When Augustine finally saw him, at the Navy Hospital, Akube´s body had been totally drained of his life. He was gone. 
“When I saw my brother, I grabbed him, but he had stiffened. I called his name, no answer. My wife started crying. I looked at the body and said to myself “they wasted my brother!”.”
Augustine says he noticed other victims of the protest at the Navy Hospital. The security man at the hospital, according to Augustine, said two people were admitted but many more were turned down &#8211;  just as Akube had been turned down. 
Akube’s remains would later be embalmed locally and transported that same night to his village in Delta state.
“What they did to my brother is wrong,” Augustine laments. “He did not participate in the protest. Even if he did, the protest was peaceful. There is nothing wrong with a protest. The protesters just had flags and placards. They were peaceful. They were just fighting for their rights. It is wrong for the government to have killed them. ”
Asumo Oluwa
Asumo joined the protest on Tuesday October 20, 2020. He was one of many who got struck by bullets when Kaka led his men and the police in an assault on peaceful protesters. Even though Asumo had about 13 metal balls lodged in his body, he miraculously survived the attack.
The 34-year-old was treated locally and the metal balls were removed from his body. 
By 9pm that same day, he decided to go back home to his wife and three-year-old daughter. 
He did not make it to his family. 
Alongside five others, he was killed, and his body thrown into a canal at Achkpo, a street in Ajegunle.
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3965" src="http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Oluwas-brother-640x853.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="853" srcset="http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Oluwas-brother-640x853.jpg 640w, http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Oluwas-brother-320x427.jpg 320w, http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Oluwas-brother.jpg 810w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
The next morning, residents around the canal found the corpses. They had heard gunshots the previous night, and so concluded that the corpses had been victims of the shootings they had heard. 
One of the residents in the neighbourhood recognised Asumo and quickly alerted his younger brother, Razak Oluwa. According to testimonies from the area, the other corpses were mutilated &#8211; their hands and legs were cut off &#8211; except Asumo’s corpse. 
The residents were convinced it was a typical Kaka killing &#8211; Kaka is believed to leave such insignia on his victims.
Asumo’s corpse was fetched from the canal and cleaned. But before the body was buried, Razak and some men in the community took the corpse to Kaka’s camp seeking answers. But there were no answers &#8211; only gunshots. 
“Why were they shooting at us if they were not the ones that did it?” Razak questions. “If they were not the one who killed my brother, why did they have to shoot me too?”
Asumo was later buried in the Oluwa family house. He left behind a wife and a daughter. 
Celestine Godwin
Godwin had joined two previous protests in Ajegunle. According to those close to him, he would always join any protest in the community so long as it was peaceful. 
But on the afternoon of Tuesday October 20, he was at home with his sisters in their little apartment &#8211; peacefully tucked away from the chaos that was starting to brew a few streets away.
Then Godwin got a visitor &#8211; a seemingly innocuous event which would prove life-changing.
“If his friend had not come,” says Blessing, the deceased’s younger sister, “he might not have left the house.”
Godwin walked his friend to the bus stop. That was when he realised the protest had gotten intense. Unbeknownst to him, he would get caught up in it all &#8211; fatally.
Some minutes after Godwin left home, Blessing received a call from his phone. But it was not Godwin at the end of the line. It was, rather, a stranger &#8211; who told Blessing that her brother had been hit by a stray bullet and was dying.
“No one could wait to help him,&#8221; Blessing recalls. ¨He was left by the roadside as everyone ran for cover. When we got to the place where he was shot, he had already died.¨ 
The family took the remains of Godwin home and buried him as quickly as they could.
Although the stranger who called the family with Godwin’s phone claimed he had been hit by a stray bullet, the family believes that the bullet came from the Kaka’s gun. 
“We have seen Kaka shoot people in this place,” claims Godwin’s older brother. “He was the one who led the police. Ask anybody, they will tell you.”
“When trouble starts in Ajegunle, it is Kaka they always call because he is the one that has the mind to shoot people anyhow.”
Blessing has much more than grief. She is angry. She feels cheated and bullied by a government she believes should have had her back. She is a struggling mother. She has no job and relied on the help she got from her late brother to make ends meet. 
“It is because we are poor,” she laments. “In this country, poor people do not have anything. Poor people cannot do anything. Poor people hide their heads. As they have killed my brother, what can we do? Nothing! They have killed him and there is nothing we can do about it.
“I thank God my brother was not a thief. He had a job. He was hardworking. But Kaka killed him. We do not have family to help us. We do not have anyone to help us. Since we do not have anyone to fight for us, our God will fight for us.¨
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Kaka: Merchant of Massacre – Part 3

<div class="bt_bb_wrapper">By: Banjo Damilola
A Terror in a Town: #EndSARS protesters in the popular Lagos State slum of Ajegunle were murdered and maimed, it was only a reflection of an existing order of bullying through bullets, epitomized by a cruel character in the community.
When this reporter first met James Yaya, he was bed-ridden. He had been shot in his upper thigh by one of Kaka’s men. Yaya later died at home because of lack of adequate medical care. 
His aged father could not afford the hospital bill. So he was taken to a traditional medicine centre where the bullet was removed. He died months later on the only bed in the one room apartment he shared with his family.
Yaya was another victim of the Ajegunle #EndSARS protest shootings. 
Before his death, Yaya spoke with this reporter. He remembered sitting outside his home when protesters ran towards his street, searching for cover as Kaka and his men closed in on them. 
“It was Kaka and his boys who shot me,&#8221; Yaya says assuredly. ¨I saw them.¨ 
¨When I saw them approaching,” he continues. ¨I wanted to run inside, but the man who was beside Kaka pointed the gun at me and shot me. Kaka had a gun with him too.”
Yaya’s narration was not strange. There is a video &#8211; exclusively obtained by this reporter &#8211; of Kaka wielding a gun and shooting in broad daylight. 
In the video, Kaka is seen shooting pointedly multiple times. He is in the company of an unidentified man. It is not clear from the video the type of firearm Kaka has with him, because the gun is strategically wrapped up in a sack. But, the unidentified man with him holds a Muzzleloader. Indeed, gunshot wounds seen on victims show they were hit by lead balls, a bead-like bullet used by muzzleloaders.  The bullet patch on Abraka was a circle, large enough to fit a sizable bead. 
Open source verification of the video pinned the location at Oyegunle street, in Ajegunle. There are similar features seen in the video that are present on Google Earth. 
The video, without its audio, was also shown to multiple residents in the area, and everyone of them seems to identify the man doing the shooting as Kaka.
“Ha! That’s Kaka,” exclaims one of the residents. “That was how they were shooting during EndSARS.”
In the video itself, voices from where it was discreetly recorded call out Kaka’s name, suggesting he is the one shooting. 
“Na kaka,” says a male voice in pidgin English.
All fingers point to Kaka
Relatives of those killed during the October protest are convinced that it was Kaka who killed their loved ones. Many of them did not blame the police, they were more enraged by the enormous power of an ordinary citizen &#8211; like them &#8211; to kill without sanction.
Blessing Godwin is a resident in Ajegunle. Her brother, Celestine Godwin, was killed during the protests. She accused Kaka of murdering her brother. 
The young mother is furious, unable to sit down for a structured interview. She believes, without doubt, that her brother was killed by Kaka.
“The only thing that will mean justice is for Kaka to also die, just as he killed my brother,” Blessing cries.
A police source familiar with the operations of Kaka within the police ranks in the neighbourhood confirmed that Kaka led the assault on peaceful protesters on Tuesday, October 20. 
A youth leader at Ajegunle and close ally of Kaka, Michael Ojobaro, confirmed that Kaka was at the scene of the violence with other police personnel. The day this reporter had the interview with the council chairman, Ojobaro was at the office. 
“He (Kaka) only went to give the police backup,” says Ojobaro. “He could not go to secure the secretariat because the chairman (Ayoola) does not want a repeat of what happened in 2018. That was why the chairman did not call the OPC for backup.”
What happened in 2018?
In 2018, a <a href="https://punchng.com/family-of-murdered-lagos-guard-demands-corpse-from-police/">report</a> by the Punch Newspaper indicted Kaka for the murder of one Jessie Onaniba. It was the first time the media explicitly blamed him in the wake of many atrocious activities attributed to him. The Onaniba family also openly named Kaka as the killer of their kinsman. 
The deceased´s elder brother, Chukwunedu, told the newspaper, “people are afraid of giving me the real name of Kaka, who killed my brother, because they fear him”. 
On the night of July 24, 2018, Jessie Onaniba, a security man, was at his duty post when Kaka and his men allegedly attacked Okoya Street, where he was a security guard. The men attacked Jessie, killed him and mutilated his corpse.
“They cut Jessie hand and im leg,” one of Jessie&#8217;s friends, who does not want to be named for fear of being attacked, tells this reporter in pidgin. “Na so Kaka people dey do people wey dem kill. Dem go cut their hands and legs. 
This, however, is not that 2018 incident Ojobaro was referring to. 
What he was referring to was an odious event that took place the day the council chair Fatai Ayoola won his party’s primary election. Ayoola is a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Kaka and his men allegedly killed two people during the debacle, which happened inside the Ajeromi Ifelodun secretariat.
What happened in the aftermath of those killings reaffirmed Kaka´s profile as a highly connected power player. The case got buried, never reaching court, and, according to a source familiar with the matter, the victims’ families were bribed to keep quiet.
In Ajegunle, Kaka is widely regarded as a high-level thug who executes criminal activities for local politicians. His notoriety grew steadily as he enjoyed favours and gained access into the workings of the grassroot government. 
The name Kaka induces fear. Few residents dare to mention it boldly. They whisper or use euphemisms. In the council secretariat, people call him ‘Alhaji’ &#8211; never mentioning his name.
His official name, Kazeem Morufu, is only known by few, who would rather keep it off their lips. Many of the residents said his reputation as a ruthless rogue earned him close ties to the council chair and the wealthy businessman, Ndokwa.
Kaka is also one of the leaders of the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC), a Yoruba nationalist movement with a vibrant local vigilante network. The group, rumoured to have mystical powers, act as local security providers in some communities in southwest Nigeria, and are feared by local thieves and miscreants. 
However, the group is not licensed to carry guns. 
The notoriety of the OPC also adds to the arrogance of Kaka. He commits horrendous human rights violations and escapes unscathed. He allegedly kills so confidently that he has time to mark his victims with an insignia. Multiple sources interviewed by this reporter say Kaka cuts off the legs and hands of those he kills &#8211; just as he allegedly did to Jessie Onaniba.
As a result of his proximity to power, Kaka enjoys immunity that allows him to operate with impunity. 
¨He is the MC Oluomo of Ajegunle,” says another source, who does not want to be named for fear of being targeted. (Musiliu Ayinde Akinsanya, popularly known as MC Oluomo, is the chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers &#8211; NURTW). 
On December 23, 2020, this reporter saw Kaka waltz in and out of the chairman’s office, an act that further confirms his closeness to the council chair. He strode arrogantly past a queue of visitors waiting to see the chairman, and straight into the office. 
<img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-3958" src="http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Kaka-and-the-chairman-640x311.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="311" srcset="http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Kaka-and-the-chairman-640x311.jpeg 640w, http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Kaka-and-the-chairman-1280x622.jpeg 1280w, http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Kaka-and-the-chairman-1024x498.jpeg 1024w, http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Kaka-and-the-chairman-320x156.jpeg 320w, http://dashboard.mysarsstory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Kaka-and-the-chairman.jpeg 1316w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
On another occasion, an officer of the Nigerian Civil Defense corps, who works for the chairman, sprang up from his seat to salute Kaka as he walked into the chairman’s office, while ignoring everyone at the reception.
Reading the Rubble 
Victims, as well as a police source, confirm that Kaka and his men have guns. The video examined by this reporter also corroborates the fact that he is in possession of at least one lethal weapon.  
Razak Oluwa, a man whose brother was allegedly killed and dumped in a canal, was shot by Dugbe, one of Kaka’s boys. 
Razak’s deceased elder brother, 34-year-old Asumo Oluwa, was shot on the dawn of Tuesday, October 20.
Razak believes it was Kaka and his men who killed his brother.
Asumo, on the night before his murder, had left his mother at about 9pm for his home, where he lived with his wife and three-year-old daughter. 
As it turned out, instead of making it home alive, Asumo made it into a canal, dead.
Razak recalls the hostility of Kaka and his boys when he (Razak), in the company of some other aggrieved men from the community, confronted Kaka about the killing of his brother. 
They wanted answers to why Asumo was killed but instead they were fed with bullets.
“I could have died,” Razak says. “One of my other friends who went with me died when they shot at us.” 
Razak has bullet wounds in his arms and thighs &#8211; the type of wounds seen on Abraka, the 19-year-old boy that was shot during the protest in Ajegunle.
Asumo´s bereaved mother is inconsolable &#8211; the last time she saw her son was the night of October 20. Mothers, per Yoruba tradition, are not allowed to know where their child is buried. 
The mother, as well as her maimed son Razak, say council chair Ayoola, Kaka´s alleged boss, paid them a condolence visit. 
“He visited us because the Oluwa family is popular,” says Razak.
Counting the losses
The attacks on unarmed protesters and residents by Kaka-led thugs in Ajegunle emboldened miscreants in the community.
The miscreants, according to eyewitnesses, took advantage of the existing chaos created by Kaka and the police. They vandalized police stations and the government secretariat. While Kaka and the police were shooting at protesters, the miscreants were wreaking havoc at the council secretariat and other areas not guarded by police. 
They razed the council building, along with the vehicles parked in the premises. They also looted Ajeromi Ifelodun primary school. 
The police chief in Lagos said at least two police vans were destroyed during the violence. Council officials claim 76 vehicles were burnt. The headmaster of the community primary school said all the fans and computers in the school were carted away. 
Yet these material losses, as sad as they seem, cannot outweigh the human casualties, which so far have received no official confirmation. There is no official count of the people killed (or injured) during the protests in Ajegunle.
The council chair admits that peaceful protesters were killed, but discards the casualties, saying  “a number of policemen also lost their lives too&#8221;. 
Lagos State Governor Sanwo-Olu took stock of damaged state property, while families of the dead and injured are yet to be consoled.
Ajegunle residents seem to have given up hope of getting justice for their deceased loved ones. And more despairingly, they do not believe Kaka would ever be held accountable for any of his alleged atrocities. 
This is the second part in a series that documents atrocities committed against peaceful #EndSARS protesters, and how a high-ranking political thug terrorises a poor and defenseless community.  The concluding part is an obituary of residents killed at Ajegunle.
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