Anonymous

2005 

Location: Lagos 

Fifteen years ago in Lagos, Uncle A bid his pregnant wife and son farewell, and stepped out of his home to hang out with friends. He never made it back. 

He went missing. His family immediately started to search for him. They placed reports, his pictures and name were constantly published in the newspapers. His mother believed fervently that he would be found alive. After 6-7 years of excruciating uncertainty and pain, someone came across his picture in the newspapers and told the family that he had been arrested by SARS at a bar. When his mother and sister finally traced the police station he had been taken to, the police officer said to them, 

“Una just Dey come? We don waste am, that one don die since.”

When his family made a scene, the police told them that he was an armed robber and that’s why they killed him — extrajudicially. 

“They lied, because he was nothing like that,” says his niece. “He was my favourite uncle. He was the most easy going person I’d met as a child. He was generous,  kind and fun to be with.”

His mother died hurt, says his niece. Not knowing why her son had to be killed. Not knowing anything at all.