The Owode Onirin saga is one that should trouble every Nigerian who still believes in the possibility of justice, especially for the ordinary citizens. On 27th August 2025, a day the traders of that sprawling motor spare parts market now call ‘Black Wednesday’, six men were shot dead in broad daylight during the enforcement of a disputed land claim. The police officers who pulled the triggers were brought all the way from Nasarawa State by a property developer, one Abiodun Ariori, who was acting as agent for a Lagos family claiming ownership of the land. What has followed since that bloody day is a study in institutional cynicism.

The then Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Moshood Olohundare Jimoh, did what any responsible police chief should do. He ordered an investigation, following which four police officers (Inspectors Musa Bala and Ahmed Abass, and Corporals Ibrahim Kasimu and Ibrahim Garba) were arrested and dismissed from service. After completing their probe, the police also obtained autopsy reports from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital and ballistic examination findings from the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID). Both reportedly linked the suspects to the killings. “This matter has not been swept under the carpet. Nobody can stop us from ensuring that justice is done,” Jimoh told the media last month, shortly before he was elevated to the position of an Assistant Inspector General of Police.

Then the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) entered the picture. And everything fell apart. According to a legal advice dated 3rd March 2026 signed by the DPP, Babajide Martins, there was no prima facie case against any of the suspects. The officers, in the judgment of Martins, acted in self-defence. The DPP then took the extraordinary step of blaming the police for failing to provide forensic evidence; autopsy reports, ballistic analysis, and firearm examination necessary to sustain charges. On that basis, all charges of felony and involuntary manslaughter under the Criminal Law of Lagos State were withdrawn. The suspects walked free!

Now, this is where the matter gets interesting. In a letter dated 5th March 2026, the officer in charge of the State Criminal Investigation Department, DCP Dayo Akinbisehin wrote back to the DPP, insisting that pieces of evidence were submitted. And they were compelling enough to secure conviction of the suspects at trial. He urged the DPP to reconsider his decision. But Martins, who was on Monday elevated to the position of Permanent Secretary (Director, State Counsel) by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, ignored the counsel in what has become an extraordinary situation: the police pushing for the prosecution of their own dismissed officers, and the state’s chief prosecutor blocking the path to court. In the long history of police-state relations in Nigeria, this is a rare inversion of roles, and it tells us something about how powerful the interest being protected must be.

The DPP’s finding that the officers were “attacked by a mob” conveniently erases the circumstances under which the violence erupted in the first place: armed police personnel, imported all the way from Nasarawa state, descended on a Lagos market to enforce a contested land claim. The traders resisted. And they were killed for it. What manner of self-defence ends with six traders dead and several others injured?

The Centre for Human and Socio-Economic Rights has called for the removal of Lagos State Attorney General, Lawal Pedro, SAN, alleging that his office emboldened the lawlessness that led to the massacre. Ariori’s own lawyer has publicly stated that the land dispute was discussed at a stakeholders’ meeting chaired by Pedro, who reportedly told the traders that their allocation letters did not amount to legal ownership. If this is true, it raises serious questions about the impartiality of the ministry of justice on this matter.

Meanwhile, the six men (Bamidele Dare Mufutau, Adebayo Adewale Mathew, Adeoye Taiye, Abraham Idowu Temilola, Akinboye Oluwaseyi Olamilekan, and Akeem Aderemi Adeoye) whose bodies had been held at the mortuary for months were finally laid to rest two weeks ago in Ikorodu where the grief was compounded by rage. Morufat Oyedeji, sister to one of the victims, said her brother was just trying to make a living when he was brutally mowed down. Bamidele Arewa, a widow with two young children, pleaded with the government not to let her husband’s death be in vain. These are not abstract appeals. They are the cries of people who have lost everything and now confront a system that seems determined to pretend nothing happened.

Credit must go to Mr Femi Falana, SAN, who has refused to let this matter die. Falana’s response to the DPP’s decision was measured but firm: his legal team would submit additional evidence, and civil suits for compensation would follow. “The issue of the unlawful killing of the six unarmed traders will be pursued to its logical conclusion in the interest of justice,” he said. But even as we commend Falana, the larger indictment remains. The handling of this case sends a dangerous message: that land is worth more than life in Lagos, and the machinery of justice in the state can be deployed to insulate the powerful from accountability.

If the DPP’s legal advice is allowed to stand unchallenged, it will become a template for impunity. Every land grabber in Lagos State will know that with the right lawyer and contacts, murder can be dressed up as self-defence and forensic evidence can be made to disappear between one government office and another. It is also worth noting that the police, for all their well-documented failings in Nigeria, have on this occasion stood firmly on the side of justice. CP Jimoh (as he then was) did not equivocate. The SCID did not back down. They dismissed the officers, completed a credible investigation, and challenged the DPP’s decision in writing. This is the kind of institutional integrity we demand of the police every day. When they deliver it, they deserve our acknowledgement, and support.

The irony is bitter: the institution we spend so much time criticising for extrajudicial violence is the one insisting on accountability, while the institution charged with upholding the law is the one shielding some alleged killers. If Governor Sanwo-Olu believes in the rule of law, and not the rule of land, he must take personal interest in this matter.

Of course, many of us are aware that Lagos has always had violent land grabbers. Two cases illustrate this challenge. The first is that of Ejigbadero, a rich, powerful and well-connected Lagos Chief who committed murder over a piece of land in Alimosho and was ultimately held accountable by the court. He paid the supreme penalty for his crime. That was in this same Nigeria in 1975 under the military. For young Nigerians who may not have heard about the Ejigbadero case, I leave them with the account by master story teller, Olanrewaju Akinsola, SAN, aka, Onigegewura: Reign of Terror — The Story of Ejigbadero, The King of Land Grabbers | by Onigegewura Blog | Medium

However, in another case, also in Lagos during the military, justice was perverted. On 25th March 1977, the late MKO Abiola acquired 400 acres of farmland in Ayobo which was registered on Page 24 in Volume 1620 in the Lagos Land Registry, as belonging to Radio Communication of Nigeria (RCN) and Abiola Farms, both subsidiary companies of the same man. Following Abiola’s incarceration during the ‘June 12’ struggle, some land grabbers started to encroach on the property. With that, Abiola Farms Limited appointed Alhaji Lamidi Bisiriyu as caretaker/agent for supervision and management of the farmland. Let me take the rest of the story from my recent book which chronicled events in that infamous era, ‘THE GHOST OF JUNE 12’:

…At about 11 am. on 7 March 1995, Lamidi Bisiriyu, his three sons, Kazeem Bisiriyu, Musiliu Bisiriyu and Waidi Bisiriyu as well as one Olu Owonikoko, Dr. G.O. Oyediji and other staff, had gone to the farm with a tractor to prepare for the new planting season. As the work was going on, some people, armed with arrows, knives, cutlasses and cudgels invaded the farm. They clobbered Bisiriyu to death, severely wounded Owonikoko, and several other farm hands. The attackers also burnt a bulldozer worth about N30 million. Fortunately, some staff members who managed to escape the mayhem, alerted Policemen at the Idimu Police Station and one of the assailants was nabbed about three kilometres from the crime scene while trying to escape. Two others were later arrested.

After detailed investigations, the three suspects were charged to court for murder on 7 July 1995 and the case file sent to the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecutions, (DPP). For several months, nothing happened, despite repeated visits to the DPP by the aggrieved Abiola Farm management. Then on Thursday, 11 January 1996, there was a bizarre twist to the story. An Igbosere Magistrate Court quashed the charges against the accused people saying they had no case to answer.

In arriving at that decision, Chief Magistrate Abiola Oyefesobi relied on a legal advice from the DPP tendered in Court by prosecuting Police Inspector Albert Ebhota. In the advice dated 4 January 1996, DPP Bayo Manuwa said the accused persons committed no offence by killing Alhaji Lamidi Bisiriyu because they were defending their property. His words: “This incident arising from a dispute over land, it is my view that the suspects were exercising their right to the defence of their properties. In such a situation, a man is entitled even to kill in defence of his property. The learned authors of ARCHBOLD 29th Edition Page 892 to 894 states as follows: ‘But in defence of a man’s house, the owner or his family may kill a trespasser who forcibly dispossess him of it, in the same manner as he might by law kill in self-defence a man who attacks him personally; with this distinction however, that in defending his house, he need not retreat as in other cases of self-defence, for that would be giving up his house to his adversaries…’

“In the circumstances therefore, it is my considered view that the suspects were legally entitled to take all available steps in defence of their properties even if such steps resulted in the death of another. I therefore do not intend to prosecute any of the suspects with any offence and the holding charge against them should forthwith be dropped”.

There is a way in which the Lagos DPP advice of 1996 echoes that of the present case. There is also a way in which we can relate what happened at Abiola Farms 30 years ago to the Owode Onirin massacre of last year. Both raises a deeper question on whether the institutions of Lagos State exist to serve all citizens or only those who can afford legal cover, and if justice in Nigeria is a right or a privilege. The traders of Owode Onirin already know the answer. It is the rest of us that should be paying attention.

Remembering Olawale Banmore

When my cousin, Dr Olawale Banmore, (until his death the Managing Director of Staco Insurance) received his prostate cancer diagnosis in 2019, some close friends expected him to retreat from public life and focus solely on treatment and recovery. Instead, Wale did something extraordinary: he enrolled in a doctoral programme and threw himself into researching an issue that had long troubled him about the pervasive mistrust between Nigerians and their insurance providers. And he completed the manuscript knowing he might not see its impact.

Based on Wale’s conviction that ideas outlive us, many of his friends, led by Biodun Ladepo, Wale Jegede, as well as Taiwo and Yinka Oni have rallied to publish the book. It will be publicly presented next Tuesday in Lagos at a ceremony to be chaired by Mr Mohammed Kari, Wazirin Bauchi and former Commissioner for Insurance/CEO of NAICOM. The keynote speaker is no other than Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, while Dr Reuben Abati, FNAL will be the book reviewer.

It is indeed remarkable that even as he underwent treatment, Wale remained consumed by a singular question: why does Nigeria’s insurance industry, operating in Africa’s largest economy, remain a sleeping giant? His answer, meticulously documented in the book, ‘The Claims Advantage: How Smart Insurance Firms Win and Keep Customers’, is both simple and profound: trust is earned at the claims counter. Not at the sales desk.

At the end, Wale’s book is both an academic treatise on insurance claims management as well as a testament to the indomitable spirit of a man who refused to let illness define his final chapter OLAWALE BANMORE: WHEN DEATH COMES CALLING – THISDAYLIVE. The book will be his legacy.

Shola Oshunkeye @70

A reporter with special eyes for human interest stories, it is difficult to believe that Mr Shola Oshunkeye has joined the Septuagenarian Club. A role model for many of us, Oshunkeye is what most people would describe as a ‘perfect gentleman’. I wish him long life and good health.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com

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