On the night of 8 June 2005, six people were killed in Abuja. Not by armed robbers, or in a gun battle, but by Nigerian police officers acting on the orders of a senior officer whose romantic advance had been turned down earlier that evening.
Thirteen years later, the man identified as the planner and supervisor of those killings was promoted to Assistant Inspector-General of Police, and twenty-one years later, justice for the Apo Six still hasn’t been served.
The Six People Who Were Killed
Ifeanyi Ozor, Chinedu Meniru, Anthony Nwokike, Paulinus Ogbonna, and Ekene Isaac Mgbe were traders at the Apo Auto Spare Parts Market in Abuja. Augustina Arebu (known as Tina) was the only woman in the group and the fiancée of Ifeanyi Ozor. All six were friends, and all six were killed in what the Judicial Commission of Inquiry later described as “a continuous single exercise of elimination to conceal facts.” 
What Happened That Night
Earlier on the evening of June 8, the six friends had been at a social gathering in Abuja. Among those present was DCP Danjuma Ibrahim, a senior police officer. He made romantic advances toward Tina Arebu, but she declined, and a minor disagreement followed.
Danjuma left the gathering, and went directly to a nearby police checkpoint on Gimbiya Street, Area 11, Garki, where he told officers on duty that he had sighted a gang of armed robbers. When the Apo Six arrived at the checkpoint in their Peugeot 406, Danjuma blocked their vehicle with his own and gave a direct order to junior officers.
“Obey my last order. Shoot them! Shoot them! They refused my advances.”
The officers opened fire, and four of the six were killed on the spot. Tina Arebu and one of the men survived the initial shooting. According to the findings of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry established by President Olusegun Obasanjo and headed by Justice O.O. Goodluck, Tina Arebu was later strangled to death by DCP Danjuma Ibrahim and PC Dennis Asawa. The surviving man was tracked down and killed by 7:30am on 9 June 2005.
The Commission established that no shots were fired from the victim’s vehicle. The six traders were not armed robbers and posed no threat to anyone at that checkpoint.
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The Cover-Up
What followed the killings was a systematic attempt by the Nigerian Police to fabricate a false narrative.
Danjuma obtained weapons from Garki Police Station (two locally made pistols, two live cartridges, two expended cartridges, a cutlass, and daggers) and had them planted inside the victim’s vehicle. He then instructed the official police photographer to document the staged scene, creating the illusion of a legitimate police operation against armed criminals.
The Judicial Commission later discovered that the two pistols had not been fired in the six months prior to ballistic examination. Further investigation revealed that both weapons had been recovered from a hotel in Abuja called Rita Lori Hotel more than two weeks before the Apo Six killings, retrieved from the Garki Police Station armoury and planted in the car on the direct instruction of the Divisional Police Officer of Garki Police Station, CSP Othman Abdusalam.
The ballistic report confirmed that the expended cartridges found in the vehicle had never been fired from those pistols, proving that the entire scene was fabricated.
The bodies of all six victims were buried in two shallow graves in the Utako District of the Federal Capital Territory, under the supervision of CSP Abdusalam.
The Witness Who Was Poisoned
Among the junior officers at the Gimbiya Street checkpoint was PC Anthony Edem, who initially testified against his superior officers before the Police Administrative Board of Inquiry, but was scheduled to testify again the following Monday.
On a Sunday night, after going out with fellow policemen the previous Saturday, PC Anthony Edem died. An autopsy report from the National Hospital in Abuja revealed that he had been poisoned.
The force that killed six innocent traders to cover up a rejected romantic advance had poisoned one of its own to conceal the truth.
The Commission’s Findings
The Judicial Commission of Inquiry identified eight officers as culpable in the unlawful killings, with DCP Danjuma Ibrahim named as the primary orchestrator. The others included DPO Othman Abdusalam, Inspector Suleiman Audu, Ezekiel Acheneje, PC Sadiq Salami, PC Dennis Asawa, Emmanuel Baba, and ASP Nicholas Zachariah.
The Commission recommended that all eight be prosecuted in accordance with the law. President Obasanjo accepted the recommendations, issued a White Paper, and ordered the Police Force to take disciplinary action and pursue murder charges. He also issued a public apology to the victims’ families and provided compensation.
DPO Othman Abdusalam was held in a cell inside Police Headquarters (Louis Edet House in Abuja) awaiting his court appearance. One morning, he left his cell to pray and never returned, and has not faced justice to this day.
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What the Court Decided
In a judgment delivered approximately nine years ago, Justice Ishaq Bello of the FCT High Court, Abuja, sentenced two junior police officers to death for the Apo Six killings. Both had confessed to carrying out the shootings on the orders of DCP Danjuma.
However, the same court found that there was insufficient evidence to convict Danjuma himself; he was identified by the convicted officers, the Police Administrative Panel, and the Judicial Commission as the planner, commander, and supervisor of the killings.
The FCT High Court judgment remains open to appeal. Under Nigerian law, only the Attorney-General of the Federation has the authority to appeal or to appoint another lawyer to do so. Nine years on, neither action has been taken.
The Promotion
DCP Danjuma Ibrahim was reinstated into the Nigerian Police Force after the court’s decision not to convict him. According to a Police Wireless Message intercepted by SaharaReporters, he received all salary arrears and entitlements dating back to 2005 and was sent on a refresher course.
He was subsequently promoted to the rank of Assistant Inspector-General of Police in 2018.
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