Renowned human rights lawyer Femi Falana has filed a petition against the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Faruk Yahaya, over the extra-judicial killing of a police officer by a soldier.
Monday Orukpe, a police officer who was carrying out his official duties, was gruesomely murdered by a soldier on the 3rd of August, 2022, at the Trade Fair section of the Lagos-Badagry Motorway area of Lagos State.
Falana filed the petition on Thursday, May 25, 2023, for the deceased’s wife, Favour Monday, seeking the enforcement of her late husband’s fundamental human rights to life, dignity of the human person, private and family life, and presumption of innocence.
According to the legal liminaries, “a man should be allowed to tread Nigerian soil and breathe Nigerian air until the court finds him unworthy to do so.”.
“The respondent’s agents have no right to sniff life out of the deceased extra-judicially, as they have done in this case.
“The brutalization and indiscriminate killing of the applicant’s husband… is wrongful, oppressive, illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional, null and void, as it violates the deceased’s fundamental right to the dignity of the human person.”
Falana therefore prayed the court to issue an order compelling the respondents to establish a special education fund in the amount of N100 million for Orukpe’s four children “sufficient to cater to their educational needs from primary school to university in any educational institution they may wish to attend”.
He also prayed the court for an order “compelling the respondents to jointly and severally pay to the applicant the sum of N200 million as general and aggravated damages for the illegal violation of the fundamental rights to life, the dignity of the person, and the presumption of innocence of inspector Monday Orukpe, their breadwinner”.
According to an autopsy report from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), the deceased died as a result of multiple injuries and blunt force trauma.
