A former videographer and visual effects artist with Wale Adenuga Productions, Emmanuel Tomori, has recounted how a police shooting at a checkpoint in Lagos in 2011 left his right hand severely damaged and derailed his promising career in Nollywood.
Tomori, now 47, said he was 32 when the incident occurred on September 30, 2011, while he was travelling home on the eve of Nigeria’s Independence Day.
According to him, he had picked up a friend and was travelling from Ajao Estate Airport Road towards Egbeda when they encountered a police checkpoint around Akowonjo at about 10:30pm.
Tomori said an officer stopped his vehicle and requested his identification card. While he was waiting for the officer to return the card, he heard two gunshots from behind the vehicle.
He said another shot followed moments later and the bullet travelled through the boot of his car before striking his right hand, causing severe bleeding.
“I have been shot. I have been shot,” Tomori recalled telling the officer who had collected his identity card. He said the officers subsequently moved away while he struggled to control the bleeding.
Tomori said he and his friend eventually made their way to Dopemu Police Station, where officers questioned him about the shooting. He later lost consciousness from blood loss and was eventually taken to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital.
He alleged that people at the scene accused the officers manning the checkpoint of having been drinking and harassing motorists before the shooting. These claims are part of Tomori’s account of the incident and have not been independently established in the current report.
Before the shooting, Tomori was working with Wale Adenuga Productions, producers of programmes including Super Story and Papa Ajasco. He had studied Geography and Planning Science at the University of Ado-Ekiti, now Ekiti State University, and was building a career in video editing, motion graphics and visual effects.
He said the injury prevented him from progressing to his ambition of becoming a Nollywood director and made it difficult for him to work with computers because he could no longer properly use his right hand.
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