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On May 26, 2006,
Augustine Igbokwe penned a sombre four-paragraph letter to the
Commissioner of Police in Imo State where he lived, complaining about
grave threats to his life and that of a kinsman.

“If this incessant
threat to my life and that of Sebastine Dike is not checkmated,” he
said, “it may tantamount to loss of our lives.” He told the police how
his alleged attacker openly threatened to kill him at a funeral for not
supporting the emergence of the accused person’s brother as a local
chief in Isiala Mbano Local Government Area, where they all hailed
from. Whether the police responded to this citizen’s anxiety is neither
stated nor claimed anywhere, but based on testimonies from relatives,
community members and police documents, no arrest, warning or an order
for an undertaking was executed.

Nearly a year
later, in April 2007, while attending a political function in a nearby
location, Mr Igbokwe lost his life, allegedly in the hands of the same
assailant he warned against – a 49-year-old former member of the State
House of Assembly, Jasper Ndubuaku.

According to police
documents and eye witnesses, he was shot and killed by Mr Ndubuaku,
currently an aide to the state governor, Ikedi Ohakim, opening a
homicide case that fortifies a long-standing concern about the rights
of ‘ordinary’ Nigerians to police protection, or justice in the face of
mortal danger.

It is not clear how
the two parties lived for close to 12 months after that notification,
but on April 14, 2007, during the state governorship and House of
Assembly elections, the police document says Mr Ndubuaku shot and
killed Mr Igbokwe.

Several police
correspondences on the matter, obtained by NEXT, do not point to any
action on the solemn warnings, neither have they been denied. But
somehow, the security records, in a rambling pattern, chronicle events
observed through investigations that have run for more than three
years, with the victim’s body unburied throughout the period.

Mr Igbokwe’s
brother, Eugene, said the case has gone through a “lengthy and windy”
investigation, but has only succeeded in failing to prosecute the named
suspect. “It is a long matter that cannot be discussed in a rush,” he
said.

After the prolonged
period, which saw the family and community leaders repeatedly accusing
the police of a cover-up, the matter drew renewed attention under the
new Inspector General of Police, Ogbonnaya Onovo. Now, although
investigations indicted the accused, prosecution is yet to be initiated
by the state Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for such
arraignments.

Political storm

After the office of
the Attorney General had been requested by the police to charge the
case to court, in a memo (CB:3514/X/LEG/FHQ/ABJ/VOL.II/44), K.C
Nwokorie, the assistant chief state counsel in a letter he signed on
February 12, 2010, for the Director of Public Prosecution, Imo State
Ministry of Justice, requested the original case file from the police,
after which nothing has since happened.

The Commissioner of
Police, Legal/Prosecution section, ‘c’ department, Abuja, B. A Hassan,
also on March 25, 2010, wrote the Commissioner of Police, ‘A’
Department, Imo State command, reminding him of the case and his
readiness to provide necessary resources to facilitate the arraignment.

Over phone with
NEXT, the state Attorney General, K. C. O Njemanze, denied knowledge of
the case, citing the high volume of criminal files his office attends
to daily. Like thousand others, he said, if the case involved murder,
the suspect cannot be spared prosecution.

“If it involves
murder and armed robbery, which are very sensitive, we must charge
those concerned. Nobody is above the law here,” he said. “We charge the
person straight, no matter whose ox is gored.” He, however, promised to
provide further details if the particulars of the case were sent to him.

Many about turns

In a March 19,
2010, letter, endorsed by S.U. Onuoha, the state solicitor general, on
behalf of the AG, the police was asked to discountenance a previous
request made by the state Director of Public Prosecutions asking for
the original case files and the arrest and arraignment of Mr Ndubuaku.

Mr Onuoha wrote
that the Attorney General was yet to vet the case, three years after
the incident, and that he would inform the police of other developments.

But the victim’s family seem determined not to let go.

The deceased today
lies in the Aladinma Hospital mortuary in Imo State, partly as a
preserved evidence for this yet-to-be completed investigation, and also
as a heartbreaking memento of a horrific pursuit of justice by a family
bereaved by a murdered son. The victim’s mother, relatives say, later
died inconsolable after her son’s tragic death.

As the family
endured an arduous process which involved the relatives often
travelling to Abuja to keep appointments at the police headquarters,
the suspect was never arrested or arraigned, NEXT understands.

“There have been a string of arrests in this case, all of which have
targeted persons with very remote bearing to this case and have yielded
nothing,” said Access to Justice, a rights campaigning group, in its
December 2007 letter to former Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro.
“All of those arrests have been one-sided, extending only to relatives
of the deceased person. The principal suspect of this murder has
enjoyed some kind of arrest and detention immunity.”