By Saheed Ibrahim

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As the nation, especially the South West continues to nurse the wounds of the EndSARS protest that rocked the country in October 2020, the impacts of the protest will remain indelible in the lives of many people, especially those who lost family members.
The women, who lost their husbands and bread winners, while their marriages were still young, can never forget the protest and bless the day it started.
Such was the case-plights of Mrs Rachael Apuwabi, Mrs Deborah Ogunsakin and Mrs Modupe Oluwadare.
The three women lost their husbands to the protest, leaving behind children, whose welfare becomes the responsibility of the struggling women.
For Mrs Apuwabi, her husband died few days after she gave birth to their last child.
Unfortunately, Mr Apuwabi never saw the baby before he was murdered while returning home to meet the wife and the new member of his family.
Mr Yusuf Adebayo, her legal representative before the Judicial Panel, narrated to The Hope how Mr Apuwabi was killed during the protest against police brutality.
Mr Apuwabi was a police officer. He was posted to Igbokoda while his family live in Owo.
On October 23, he was returning from Igbokoda to see his wife, who just gave birth to their last child on October 18, 2020.
On getting to Ondo town, he ran into a mob of irate youth. On identifying that he was a police officer, he was lynched and his car was burnt into ashes.
That was how the five day old baby and her two older siblings became fatherless and their mother, a widow.
Adebayo therefore appealed to members of the panel to recommend adequate compensation for his client, in order to secure the future of the children left behind by the deceased.
To add sore to the wound, Mr Apuwabi also left behind an aged mother, whose welfare was on him.
While Mr Apuwabi, a police officer was killed by civilians, Mrs Ogunsakin’s husband, a civilian, was killed by the police.
Mr Akinyemi Ogunsakin was a commercial tricyclist, counsel to his wife, Adeolu Ajayi narrated.
On October 22, 2020, he was doing his normal day job. He took a passenger to Yaba, Ondo town. At the point of attending to the customer, who just alighted from his tricycle, a stray bullet from Yaba Police Station hit him in the head.
The bullet pierced the back of his head and came out from the front. He died on the spot.
The picture taken after his death could not be beheld twice: it was indeed a gory sight.
Similar to Apuwabi’s case, Mrs Ogunsakin was pregnant with the last child, when her husband died. The baby was born after his death.
Ogunsakin, the bread winner of his family left behind two children for his wife to cater for. Ajayi described his death as an irreplaceable loss to the family.
He however appealed to the panel to recommend adequate compensation to the widow and her children as respite for their irreplaceable loss.
For Mrs Oluwadare, her husband, a civilian, was killed by civilians. It was a tearful session, when she was making her appeal before the Justice Adesola Sidiq (rtd) led panel.
With her trembling voice and tears eroding her cheeks, the small scale hairdresser appealed for help to take care of her three children.
She begged the panel that ever since her husband, an air conditioner repairer died, there had been no help from anybody, including family members.
“If the EndSARS protest had not happened, my husband would have been alive by now”, the mother of three lamented.
Her counsel, Idowu Adedeji narrated to The Hope how Mr Oluwadare’s life was untimely cut short.
According to Adedeji, Mr Abiodun was killed in front of the Ondo State Government House during the EndSARS protest that was highjacked by hoodlums last year.
“He was on a bike. A vehicle was in front of the ‘Okada’. The protesters asked the driver to stop and they were molesting him.
In an attempt for the driver to escape, it ran into the deceased. He was taken to the hospital, where he was confirmed dead” he narrated.
While the women await the recommendations of the panel to the state government and response from the latter, their fate and that of their little children hang on divine sustenance.
As Mr Yusuf Adebayo appealed, the panel should make adequate recommendations that will be enough to take care of the children and safeguard their future. This is to prevent them from joining the long list of thugs and irresponsible adults.
The cases of these three women and their children are examples of many sad tales of those who lost their beloved to the struggle against police brutality and extrajudicial killings in 2020.