A six-year wait for answers has produced one crucial finding: journalist Pelumi Onifade did not simply disappear during the #EndSARS unrest. A forensic examination has now established that the 20-year-old died from a penetrating firearm injury to the abdomen. But the postmortem answers only how he died. The harder question—who fired the weapon and what happened after his arrest—remains before the coroner.
Six years is a long time to wait for a death certificate to tell a family what happened to their son.
For the family of Pelumi Onifade, the wait has been even more painful.
Onifade was a 20-year-old journalist with Gboah TV when he disappeared on October 24, 2020, after going to cover events around Oko-Oba in Agege, Lagos, amid the unrest surrounding the #EndSARS protests.
For years, his family did not even have certainty about where his body was.
An unidentified body had been deposited at a Lagos mortuary and tagged Body 1385.
Only in June 2026 did DNA testing establish that the unidentified body was Onifade's.
Now, another piece of the puzzle has emerged.
A nine-page postmortem report from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital has established that Onifade died from massive haemoperitoneum caused by a penetrating firearm injury to the abdomen.
The examination was conducted on November 4, 2020, although the report was not finalised and signed until July 30, 2026.
That finding changes the evidentiary picture surrounding his death.
But it does not, by itself, establish who fired the shot.
And that distinction is crucial.
What the postmortem actually establishes
The pathology report is unusually specific.
According to Media Rights Agenda, which has been supporting Onifade's family in the case, the projectile entered through his lower back and travelled posterior-to-anterior, right-to-left and infero-superior.
In ordinary language, the bullet entered from the back, travelled forward, moved from the right side toward the left and travelled upward.
The projectile caused extensive abdominal injuries, including damage resulting in massive internal bleeding.
The report also identified bony fragments embedded in the soft tissue and a fracture of the fifth lumbar vertebra.
The pathologist concluded that the injuries were consistent with a penetrating firearm injury, with the findings also described as consistent with a firearm injury involving a ricochet.
So there is now a forensic answer to one of the central questions:
Pelumi Onifade died from a gunshot injury.
But forensic pathology cannot automatically answer the next question:
Who fired the gun?
That requires the wider evidence.
The timeline matters
According to earlier reporting, Onifade was covering events around Oko-Oba on October 24, 2020.
He was reportedly wearing clothing identifying him as a journalist when officers attached to the Lagos State Task Force arrived during violence surrounding an attack on a government facility.
The Guardian reported at the time that Gboah TV said Onifade was taken away by task-force officers and that his family and colleagues subsequently searched for him.
His family alleged that he had been injured before being taken away.
Those allegations have been contested or remain matters for the ongoing legal process.
What is no longer merely an allegation, however, is that the body eventually identified as Onifade's contained a fatal firearm injury.
That distinction matters enormously.
From a missing journalist to Body 1385
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the story is the gap between the disappearance and identification.
Onifade disappeared in October 2020.
His body was later deposited at the Ikorodu General Hospital mortuary as an unidentified body.
For years, that body was known as 1385, rather than by the name of the person whose life had ended inside it.
In June 2026, a DNA comparison ordered through the coroner's proceedings confirmed the identity.
The DNA sample from Onifade's family matched the unidentified body.
That discovery transformed the case.
The question was no longer simply:
Where is Pelumi?
It became:
What happened to Pelumi between the moment he was reportedly taken away and the moment his body entered the mortuary system?
Why the coroner's inquest matters
The postmortem is not the end of this case.
It is evidence for the proceeding that is supposed to establish the circumstances surrounding Onifade's death.
The inquest exists because of a Federal High Court judgment delivered on July 19, 2024.
Justice Ayokunle Olayinka Faji directed the Lagos State Attorney-General to take steps to investigate the circumstances of Onifade's death, establish its cause and identify and prosecute those responsible.
That judicial intervention came after Media Rights Agenda sued the Lagos State Government and the Nigeria Police Force.
The coroner's process subsequently began.
And it has been slow.
In June 2026, the coroner had to order LASUTH and the Lagos State DNA and Forensic Centre to produce the autopsy and DNA records relating to Body 1385.
By September, the inquest had still been dealing with adjournments and outstanding evidence.
The postmortem report has now been submitted to the coroner.
That means the next stage is not simply to establish that Onifade was shot.
It is to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding that shooting.
A gunshot does not identify the shooter
This is where the public conversation needs to remain disciplined.
It would be easy to take the postmortem finding and immediately declare that a particular security agency or officer killed Onifade.
The available postmortem evidence does not, by itself, establish that.
What it establishes is the mechanism of death.
The coroner must determine the circumstances.
That means questions about the weapon, ammunition, scene, witnesses, arrest records, custody records, vehicles, officers deployed to Oko-Oba, communications and other forensic evidence become central.
If a weapon was recovered, it should be examined.
If ballistic evidence exists, it should be examined.
If officers discharged firearms in the area, their weapons and ammunition records should be investigated.
If there are CCTV recordings, photographs, videos or mobile-phone footage from the area, those should be examined.
If Onifade was arrested, the question of who arrested him and where he was taken becomes critical.
And if he was already wounded when taken away, the evidence should establish when, where and by whom that injury occurred.
These are questions for investigators and the coroner—not conclusions that should be manufactured before the evidence is heard.
The larger #EndSARS context
Onifade's death occurred during one of the most consequential periods of civil unrest in Nigeria's recent history.
The #EndSARS demonstrations began as protests against police brutality, particularly the activities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad.
The protests spread nationwide and attracted international attention.
On October 20, 2020, soldiers were deployed to the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, where protesters were gathered.
The wider unrest also produced attacks on police facilities, government buildings, businesses and other property in different parts of Lagos.
The state responded with security deployments, arrests and enforcement operations.
Onifade's death occurred against that highly volatile background.
But context should not become an excuse for uncertainty.
A journalist covering unrest does not lose the protections associated with journalism simply because the environment is dangerous.
And a person taken into custody does not cease to have a right to life.
Those principles are particularly important when the person subsequently dies.
The unanswered custody question
One of the most important questions in the Onifade case concerns what happened after he was allegedly taken away.
Contemporary reporting said his family and colleagues searched police stations and other detention locations after his disappearance.
The Guardian reported that a family member said searches were conducted across Lagos before the family eventually discovered that an unidentified body was in a mortuary.
The exact chain of custody needs to be established through evidence.
If Onifade was arrested:
Who ordered the arrest?
Which officers carried it out?
Was an arrest record created?
Was he booked into a detention facility?
Was he transferred?
Was medical attention sought?
Who last saw him alive?
Who had custody of him after he was injured?
How did his body eventually reach a mortuary?
Those questions are more important now because the postmortem has established a fatal gunshot injury.
What did the police and Lagos authorities know?
The case also raises institutional questions.
A 2020 report quoted the Lagos police spokesman as saying the matter was being investigated and had been transferred to the Commissioner of Police.
But six years later, the circumstances of the death are still being investigated through a coroner's process.
The Federal High Court's 2024 order is significant precisely because it required a formal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death.
The court did not simply say that the case should disappear into an administrative file.
It directed the state to establish what happened and identify those responsible.
The public therefore has a legitimate interest in seeing the process completed.
The postmortem also exposes a forensic-system problem
There is another story buried inside this case.
The autopsy itself was conducted in November 2020.
But the report was finalised in July 2026.
The body remained unidentified for years until DNA evidence established that Body 1385 was Onifade.
That timeline raises questions about Nigeria's forensic infrastructure and the handling of unidentified bodies.
Why was the body not identified earlier?
When was DNA first considered?
Were adequate samples preserved?
Why did the autopsy report take years to become available to the coroner?
Were records properly maintained?
These questions should not be dismissed as administrative details.
Forensic evidence is often the difference between speculation and accountability.
When that evidence is delayed for years, the ability to establish responsibility can deteriorate.
Witnesses disappear.
Memories fade.
Documents are lost.
Physical evidence can be compromised.
That is why timely forensic investigation matters.
A journalist was covering a public event
There is also a fundamental press-freedom dimension to this case.
Onifade was not reportedly carrying out a private activity when he disappeared.
He was working as a journalist.
His job was to document what was happening around him.
That makes his death particularly significant for the Nigerian media.
Journalists are often the people who remain in dangerous places when others are leaving because their role is to record events.
When a journalist disappears or dies while performing that function, the question extends beyond the individual.
It becomes a question about whether journalists can document state actions, protests, violence and public events without becoming targets themselves.
Six years later, accountability cannot stop at the cause of death
The postmortem answers one question.
How did Pelumi Onifade die?
A firearm projectile caused fatal abdominal injuries and massive internal bleeding.
But the investigation must now answer the questions that the pathology report cannot answer.
Who fired the weapon?
Where was the shot fired?
Under what circumstances?
Was Onifade in custody when he was shot?
Who arrested him?
Where was he taken?
Who had responsibility for him after the reported arrest?
Why did his body become an unidentified body in a mortuary?
Were proper procedures followed after his death?
And if the evidence establishes that a person unlawfully caused his death:
Will that person be prosecuted?
These are not questions that can be answered by political allegiance.
They cannot be answered by defending the police automatically.
They cannot be answered by condemning security agencies automatically.
They require evidence.
The family has already waited long enough
For six years, the Onifade family lived with uncertainty.
They had to search for their son.
They had to fight for an investigation.
A court had to order the Lagos State Government to initiate a formal process.
The coroner had to pursue missing forensic records.
DNA testing eventually gave the unidentified Body 1385 its name.
And now the postmortem has established that the young journalist died from a firearm injury.
That is progress.
But it is not yet justice.
The coroner's job is now to follow the evidence from the bullet wound backwards—to the location, the circumstances, the people present and the chain of events that preceded the death.
The public deserves to know what happened.
Not because every allegation against a security agency must automatically be accepted.
Not because every officer present must automatically be blamed.
But because a 20-year-old journalist disappeared during a period of extraordinary state-security operations, his body remained unidentified for years, and forensic evidence now confirms that he died from a gunshot wound.
The answer to who was responsible should come from the evidence.
And after six years, the evidence should finally be allowed to speak.
The coroner's proceedings were most recently reported as continuing, with the case having faced repeated adjournments while key evidence was awaited.
Pelumi Onifade should not remain Body 1385 in Nigeria's institutional memory.
He had a name.
He had a family.
He was a journalist.
And now that forensic science has established how he died, the country still owes his family—and the public—the rest of the story.
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