THE police on Friday paraded the suspected killer of missing Vanguard journalist Tordue Salem.
Salem, the House of Representatives correspondent of the Vanguard Newspaper, has been missing since October 13.
A 29-year-old commercial driver Clement Itoro was paraded as Salem’s killer at the Nigeria Police Force Headquarters in Abuja.
Force Public Relations Officer Frank Mba said the driver killed the journalist in a hit-and-run incident.
Questioned by journalists, Itoro said he thought the person he knocked down was an armed robber.
“I thought it was an armed robber that I knocked down until the following day when I saw a smashed phone on my windscreen. The phone was not working again so I threw it away.
“The place I knocked this person down is a criminal place everybody knows that place,” he said.
Mba said he could not speak for the hospital when asked who deposited Salem’s body at the mortuary, and why the hospital did not contact the police at the time.
According to information released by the police, Salem’s body was found on Thursday, more than a month after he went missing.
His remains were discovered at Wuse General Hospital and have been identified by his family members.
Attempts to reach Chairman of the Nigerian Union Of Journalists (NUJ) Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Chapter Emmanuel Ogbeche were unsuccessful as several calls to his mobile number did not go through.
The ICIR reported that members of the NUJ protested peacefully in Abuja on October 25 while calling on security agencies to find the journalist.
A reporter with the ICIR
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