LAGOS — For 74-year-old Francis Azenabor, time stopped moving on November 1, 2024. That was the day his son, Osas Azenabor, vanished into the back of a police patrol van near the Ketu-Mile 12 axis, never to be seen again.
Nearly two years later, the aging father sits in his living room, clutching a faded photograph of the 40-year-old transporter. His plea to the authorities is as simple as it is heart-wrenching: “If you have killed him, give us his body. If he is alive, let us see him. Just stop the silence.”
The nightmare began on a Friday morning during a routine police raid. According to the family, Osas was picked up by officers and thrown into a waiting bus. In a frantic, final phone call made from a borrowed mobile phone while in custody, Osas told his wife he was being held at the Ketu Police Station.
But when his wife arrived at the station barely an hour later, the trail went cold. Officers on duty reportedly brushed off her inquiries, claiming no such person had been brought in. Since that afternoon, the Azenabor family has lived in a perpetual state of mourning for a man who hasn’t officially died.
“We have combed every cell in Lagos. We have looked through the cold rooms of mortuaries and walked the floors of every prison from Kirikiri to Badagry,” the elder Azenabor said, his voice trembling. “Everywhere we go, the police tell us the same thing: ‘He is not in our records.’ But we saw him in their bus. People saw him.”
The family’s desperation turned to shock when the father claimed to have spotted one of the officers from the raid at a local lottery shop months later. When confronted, the officer reportedly became hostile and fled.
Despite multiple petitions sent to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police and the Inspector General’s office, the silence from the Force has been deafening. Lagos Police Public Relations Officer has yet to provide a definitive update on the investigation into the disappearance.
As the days turn into years, the Azenabors are left with an empty chair at the dinner table and a mounting sense of injustice. In a city of millions, Osas Azenabor has become a ghost—a victim of a system that critics say is quick to arrest but slow to account for those in its care.
