Nigeria: Compensation for families of six youths killed by police

The Nigerian government in a landmark move has paid compensation to families of six people wrongly shot and killed by police. Police Affairs Minister Broderick Bozimo on Friday (December 2) paid out cheques of three million naira (US $21,000) each to representatives of the families of five men and one woman killed by police in June 2005. The police had claimed the six were armed robbers, killed while trading gunfire with police in the Apo district of the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Bozimo said a judicial inquiry launched by the government found “incontrovertible evidence” the victims were not armed robbers. “Government therefore exonerates the six victims and apologises to their families and in fact all Nigerians,” he said.