Nigeria Content Online

One too many Nigerians are carrying scars from police brutality
and extra-judiacial killings. One such person is 16-year-old Godwin Joshua, an
SS1 student, who was shot by yet-to-be-identified police officers on April 3,
2010 in Ajegunle.

April 3 was the day almost 2,000 youth marched the streets of
Ajegunle, protesting the death of another youth, Charles Okafor, who died two
days earlier following alleged police harassment and brutality.

Godwin remembers that day clearly. He remembers he did not pray.
He remembers when he woke in the morning, his plan was to do “my duty at home
and later I’ll go to work then go and play ball”. He even remembers the black
pair of jeans and blue shirt he wore on the day. And he remembers it was a
little after 10am when he became a victim of police brutality.

“My dad sent me on an errand so when I returned I took up my
tools to go to where they called me to work because I do furniture work. But
when I got there what I saw was unbelievable. People were running here and
there. The police were shooting and everyone was running. I also ran but the
next thing I found myself…,” Godwin pauses and shakes his head. It’s obvious
the memories are still fresh. He says the next thing he remembers is the pain
he felt in his legs and being at a police station and a group of Police
officers deciding his fate.

“Some of the police were saying that they should give me a gun
or machete so that they’ll take my picture, so that they will say maybe I am
among those that are fighting,” Godwin recounts, “but one of the police man
said I am too small for such a thing that they should just throw me somewhere
or take me to anywhere”.

The bullets had hit his right and left thighs, barely missing
his penis. Assuming he would not survive, he said, the police took him to the
Isolo General Hospital where they abandoned him. Family members found him three
days later.

Pain untold

“He was lying down on the bed. All his legs were swollen. I felt
serious tears in my eyes. I said to myself how can a man live like this in his
own country, not America, or anywhere else, but my own country. I don’t want to
say I regret being a Nigerian,” said Godwin’s father Udofia Joshua.

Godwin says “for those three days the only thing that came to my
mind was just for God to take my life because I was going through pain. Nothing
on earth amused me during that period.”

Unable to pay for hospital treatment, Mr. Joshua took his son
home and resorted to use of traditional medicine and family care.

Godwin’s cousin, Magdalene Joshua, a nurse, attended to him for
the four months, giving him injections and dressing his wounds. She wonders why
the police carried Godwin to the Isolo General Hospital instead of either the
General Hospital in Ajeromi or Apapa.

She recounts her experience attending to Godwin. “If you entered
the room (where the victim lay for months), it would be smelling due to the
odour. If you see the leg that time when I was doing the dressing. My
instruments like forceps, I used to put rope to pull it out. That time he could
not do anything,” she said.

“It is God that did it because for those four months, there was
no money. It is only if people come around they’ll give us small something,”
she narrated.

For the victim’s mother, Magdalene Joshua, her days of “worrying
sick and thinking a lot” are over.

She says she is thankful because other youths, like Babatunde
Olotu, were killed on the day of the protest. She says wants to see her son
“walk better like before, finish school and further his education.”

Godwin believes “only the rich can get justice in this country”.

But as he manages to walk, he says he doesn’t forget to pray
every day. He sees life as having given him a second chance. He is, however,
worried for his family.

“The Police abandoned me so I cannot count on them. All I can ask is help
for my family because they are down. Even the money they have spent on me they
borrowed it and till now they have not paid back. But I don’t trust the Police
to help.”