Extra-judicial killing: Panel summons ASP Marcus Joe, Operation Skolombo in Calabar

The Independent Investigative Panel on allegations of human rights violations by Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the Police in Nigeria has summoned Assistant Superintendent of Police Marcus Joe to appear before it on February 9, 2021, and explain the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Ephraim Ita.

ASP Marcus Joe was alleged to have deposited the body of Mr Ephraim Ita at a General Hospital mortuary in Calabar, the Cross River state capital.

The Panel also ordered the Cross River State Police Command in Southern Nigeria to furnish the panel with its entries in respect of movement of the corpse to the hospital’s mortuary on the adjourned.

The 11-Member panel also ordered Operation Skolombo to appear before it in order to assist the panel with information relating to the death of Mr Ephraim Ita.

Operation Skolombo is a multi-security task force made up of the Police, Department of State Service, Nigerian Civil Defence Corps and the Nigerian Navy, established by the Cross River state government to maintain peace and order in the state.

Earlier, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Kabiru Salisu, during cross-examination, told the panel that Police personnel were not part of Operation Skolombo the very day the incident happened.

It would be recalled that at the younger brother to the deceased, Mr Paul Offiong, had told the panel that his brother had on June 17, 2017, gone to Church for the purpose of worship and never came back.

According to him, the deceased who was suffering from depression was frequently going to the Church to worship and to be possibly healed so that he could go back to his normal business only for someone to inform the family that their brother had been shot and his dead body in the custody of the Police.

The Independent Investigative Panel was set up by the National Human Rights Commission, an agency of the Nigerian government to investigate alleged rights violations by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in the country.

Zainab Sa’id