The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Students Engagement, Hon. Comrade Sunday Dayo Asefon, has expressed grief over the killing of Stephen Afolabi Opaso, a Nigerian student in the University of Manitoba in Canada.
Asefon described the killing as barbaric and vowed to engage the High commission of Canada in Nigeria and further collaborate with the Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairperson of NIDCOM to ensure that the killing is not swept under the carpet.
The late Stephen Afolabi Opaso, a 19-year-old Nigerian international student in Canada identified as Zigi by peers, was shot dead by the Winnipeg Police Service in Manitoba on December 31, 2023.
He was alleged to be wielding a knife and had mental health problem at the time of the incident.
The Winnipeg Police in their statement, acknowledged the confrontation with an armed male but provided limited details.
“On December 31, 2023, at approximately 2:22 p.m., the Winnipeg Police Service responded to an apartment suite in the first 100 block of University Crescent for a 911 call regarding a male acting erratically. The caller advised the male may be armed and there were other people in the suite.
During this encounter, an officer discharged their firearm, striking the male. Officers provided immediate medical care and ensured the well-being of all other parties on scene. Nobody else was injured.
The male was transported to hospital in critical condition and succumbed to his injuries,” the statement read.
Hon. Asefon said the impression in the public as gathered during an interaction with the official National Association of Nigerian students NANS earlier on the case is that the killing was racially motivated as the student was not welding a gun at the time of the incident and that the police officers would have acted differently if he were to be a white.
He thus appeal to NANS and the entire Nigerian students to remain calm, and vowed to follow the case up diligently until the Canadian authorities give a true account of the death and compensate his family to avoid a diplomatic row that may lead to the closure of their embassy in Nigeria by NANS as earlier threatened if no action is taken by Nigeria within three working days.
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