By Charles Akpeji, Jalingo
Mr. Pius Nyado has told the Christopher Awubra-led panel addressing police brutality in Taraba State how security operatives deformed him while he was celebrating the electoral victory of Governor Darius Ishaku in 2019.
Nyado, who was helped into the hall yesterday in crutches, told the panel in Jalingo that police and army officers brutalised him, leaving bullets in his body, which incapacitated him.
The panel expressed dismay at the manner the police and other accused security outfits continued to frustrate its proceedings by not appearing before it.
Members of the panel, who just resumed from the yuletide holiday, wondered why the Commissioner of Police, who ought to be the major respondent in most of the petitions, continued to disregard the panel by failing to appear in person.
Explaining how several bullets lodged in his body were extracted at the state’s specialist hospital, Nyado added that a bullet was still in his body.
The petitioner lamented that his weekly hospital bill had been draining the meagre resources of his parents; hence he urged the panel to award him N150 million damages.
Wielding pictures of the various bullet wounds he sustained, Nyado stated: “I was shot in my thigh, as well as left and right arms. I was also shot in my pelvis. A bullet is still inside me now.”
He also tendered medical documents depicting the operations carried out on him at the hospital, different x-rays, as well as metals of various sizes inserted in his body to support his fractured bones.
His counsel, Musa John, passionately appealed to the panel to declare the shooting of the petitioner without just cause as unlawful.
Consequently, he sought the arrest and prosecution of the police and army officers who shot his client. John, who stated that the petitioner had been going through untold hardship since the March 2019 brutalisation, believed that awarding a compensation of N150 million would go a long way in ameliorating the sufferings of his client and his family.
