FIJ
When Gad Jacob jumped on his motorcycle in mid-July 2021, to head home after a shift at Dangote Sugar Refinery, Nigeria’s biggest sugar factory, he had no idea it would be the last time he would be making the journey.
As the 26-year-old wound his way through Numan, a sleepy town on the outskirts of Yola, the capital of Adamawa State, he encountered a roadblock.
Dozens of youths were preparing to protest against the activities of the Dangote Sugar Refinery, the factory where Jacob worked.
Dangote Sugar Refinery had been accused of denying local people permanent jobs and exploiting its thousands of casual workers.
As Jacob tried leaving the scene, one of the protesters seized the license plate of his motorcycle, forcing him to stay,
With time, the crowd grew large and became restless, chanting slogans and preparing to march to the refinery’s entrance.
“There was no violence,” said Victor Jeremiah, one of the protesters. “We were simply shouting outside their perimeter fence.”
As tension between the protesters and the refinery’s officials grew, armed soldiers were invited to the scene.
The incident that followed as soon as the soldiers arrived has remained an object of dispute till date.
The military, on its part, claimed youths attacked the troops with machetes and tried to break into the factory.
To stop the youths from breaking in, the soldiers responded with “non-violent” means, firing warning shots into the air and using tear gas to repel the crowd.
According to a statement from the refinery managers, known by the acronym DSR, three people sustained minor injuries in the fracas, and nothing more.
However, a dozen eyewitnesses, backed up by medical documents, photographs, police statements, and an autopsy obtained by reporters, told a very different story.
By these accounts, most of which had never been reported before, at least 12 people were injured that day. The injured include five protesters who were allegedly shot by soldiers. One of them, Jacob, was killed.
A bullet tore through his calf, leaving him in a pool of blood on the road. He was taken to a specialist hospital for surgery, but died there 10 days later. An autopsy found the cause of death to be a bone marrow embolism caused by a gunshot wound which had fractured his right leg.
DSR, which supplies its products to major global brands like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestlé, Cadbury, and Pepsi Co., appeared to shrug off the incident, not mentioning it in the company’s annual report for the year.
The company, in its 2021 update to the world’s largest sustainable business initiative which the United Nations backs, made no reference to the protests or the allegations that casualties were recorded.
Speaking on the incident, Philip Jakpor, director of the Renevlyn Development Initiative, a Nigerian organisation that seeks to challenge corporate impunity, said, “No firm can be greater than the state.”
DSR did not respond to multiple requests for comments on the incident prior to the time this article was published.
No one has been prosecuted in relation to the events of July 15, 2021, the day the incident happened.
The Nigerian military denied any wrongdoing while the protest went on.
Major General Jerry Akpor, the Defence Headquarters’ spokesman at the time, said an internal investigation was carried out, but declined to give details.
Brigadier General Tukur Ismaila Gusau, the forces’ current spokesperson did not also give any reply to requests for comment.
‘LET HIM DIE’
Nadiye Obasanjo, a 27-year-old delivery driver, said he was standing on the sidelines watching the protests outside the DSR factory when he was shot in the stomach.
He collapsed onto the road, where he lay for hours before help arrived.
“Some soldiers wanted to take me to the hospital when they saw the bullet wound,” Obasanjo recalled.
“But their superior stopped them, saying “Let him die, drop him there”.”
Obasanjo subsequently had an emergency surgery on his gut and spent four months in hospital recovering, according to medical records and photographs. Those memories are still etched in his flesh, where a huge scar bisects his body from his chest down to his stomach.
Obasanjo said his digestive system has never been the same since he got shot. He now eats solid food in pain.
Presently, he survives on mashed vegetables and pap, a type of bland corn mush eaten as a side dish in many places in Africa. The pain from his scars now also prevent him from working on the small farm he inherited from his father, where he grows rice and soybeans.
“I have not been able to take care of it myself because I can’t bend for a long time without pains in my back area. I have to pay manual workers,” Obasanjo said.
JUSTINE IGNATIUS WAS SHOT IN THE CALF
Justine Ignatius spent two months in the hospital after being shot in the calf while protesting. The surgery to remove the bullet left him with one leg shorter than the other, dashing his dreams of one day becoming a soldier himself.
Ignatius now wears shoe lifts to help address his uneven height.
“I still feel pain whenever I walk,” the 25-year-old told a reporter who visited his modest one-bedroom home.
“My leg cannot do what it used to do. If I take off my shoe, I walk haphazardly without it.”
AUGUSTINE PHILEMON AND PETER AMOS
Two other protesters, Augustine Philemon and Peter Amos, were also shot that day, according to their accounts, the testimony of other witnesses and medical records sighted by reporters.
Amos said he was shot in the back as he tried to escape the teargas that troops fired at the crowd.
