Lagos orders Chief Coroner to probe death of journalist Pelumi Onifade who died in police custody during #EndSARS protest

The Lagos State Government has expressed its readiness to comply with the orders of a Federal High Court in Lagos directing an inquiry into the manner and cause of death of Mr. Pelumi Onifade, a 20-year-old reporter with Gboah TV, who was reportedly arrested by the Police while covering the #EndSARS protests in October 2020 and later found dead.

In a letter dated September 2, 2024, addressed to the law firm of Charles Musa & Co, lawyers to Media Rights Agenda (MRA), which sued the State Government over Mr. Onifade’s death, the Chief State Counsel in the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions, Mr. Oluwaseun Akinde, writing on behalf of the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, said the Coroner Unit of the Directorate would write to the State’s Chief Coroner, Justice Mojisola Dada, to request her to convoke an inquest into the death, in compliance with the court’s orders.

Mr. Akinde’s letter was in response to an earlier letter, dated August 22, 2024, by Mr. Kingsley Kenechukwu of Charles Musa and Co., addressed to the Attorney-General urging the Government to “comply with the directives of the honorable court so that justice would be seen to be done and hope given to the common man that there is still justice in the judicial system.”

Saying that the matter was referred to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions by the office of the Attorney-General, Mr. Akinde first proposed that the law firm could write directly to the office of the Chief Coroner to request the convocation of an inquest, but added that as an alternative, the Coroner Unit in the Directorate would write to the Chief Coroner’s office instead to ask her to conduct the inquest, in compliance with the Court’s judgement. He therefore asked the law firm to send him a copy of the judgement of the Federal High Court to attach to the letter to the Chief Coroner.

He advised that further correspondence on the matter should be addressed to him, adding that he could also be contacted directly on phone regarding further enquiries for quicker responses and provided his phone number for such contact.

The exchange of correspondence followed the July 19, 2024 judgement of Justice Ayokunle Olayinka Faji in a suit filed by MRA in which he directed the Attorney-General to take “all necessary steps to see to the investigation of the circumstances of the death of Pelumi Onifade and to conduct a coroner’s inquest to ascertain the cause of the death.”

MRA filed the suit against the Police through the Inspector-General of Police and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police as well as against the Lagos State Government, through the Attorney-General, asking the Court, among other things, to declare that Mr. Onifade’s shooting in Oko Oba in the Agege Local Government Area of Lagos State, by policemen on October 24, 2020 in the course of his journalistic duties is unconstitutional and a gross violation of his fundamental rights while his arrest and subsequent restriction on his liberty by the Police were unlawful.

Although Justice Faji held in his judgement that there was no evidence before the court to support MRA’s claim that the late journalist died in the custody of the Police after which his body was deposited at the Ikorodu Mortuary in Lagos, he however granted the organization’s request to order an investigation and directed the Attorney-General to take all necessary steps to see to the investigation of the circumstances of Mr. Onifade’s death; conduct a coroner’s inquest to ascertain the cause of the death; and identify and prosecute those responsible for his death.