Bosede Onifade, mother of slain #EndSARS journalist Pelumi Onifade, has pleaded with authorities to release her son’s body for burial, six years after he was killed, following a coroner’s inquest that confirmed his identity through DNA evidence.
Pelumi, then a 20-year-old mass communication student and intern with Gboah TV, went missing on October 24, 2020, while covering the #EndSARS protest in Abule Egba, Lagos.
Eyewitnesses said the young journalist was shot before operatives of the Lagos State Police Taskforce allegedly dragged him into a vehicle along with arrested protesters.
In August 2024, a Federal High Court in Lagos had ordered the Lagos State Government to carry out a coroner’s inquest to determine the cause of Onifade’s death and identify and prosecute those responsible.
Delivering judgment in a suit filed by Media Rights Agenda (MRA) against the police and the Lagos State Government over the journalist’s death, Justice Ayokunle Faji held that the state’s chief law officer could not conduct an inquest without a duplicate of the case file, noting that Section 74 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Law of Lagos State empowers the Attorney-General to request a case file from the Commissioner of Police.
On June 24, 2026, the coroner’s inquest confirmed that a body tagged 1385 at a mortuary was indeed Pelumi’s, after it matched a DNA sample provided by his mother.
Reacting to the judgment, Bosede appealed to the authorities to release her son’s remains, saying his death had left the family devastated.
“We want them to release his body. If they have already killed him, they should give his body to us to bury,” she told The Guardian. “He was not doing anything wrong. Even if he was doing something wrong, they could have arrested him and not kill him in cold blood.”
She said the six-year wait for justice had taken a heavy emotional toll on her, leaving her battling depression and memory lapses while struggling to care for Pelumi’s two younger sisters through proceeds from selling homemade ogi (pap).
“They said they would give families of the victims some money, but will it bring my son back to life? But at least we can use it to take care of his siblings. I know that whatever Pelumi couldn’t do for us, his siblings would,” she said.
Bosede insisted she would never stop calling herself “Mama Pelumi.”
“Many people try to start calling me by his siblings’ names; I tell them not to do it because his name will never depart from my household,” she said.
The #EndSARS protests broke out across Nigeria in October 2020 against police brutality and abuses by the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), before growing into wider demands for police reform, accountability and good governance.
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