Twenty-one years after six Nigerians were killed by police officers in Abuja in one of the country’s most notorious cases of extrajudicial violence, media entrepreneur Linda Ikeji is bringing the story to cinema in a new film titled The Night of June 7th.
On the night of 7 June 2005, five Igbo traders from the Apo auto spare parts market in Abuja and a woman, Augustina Arebu, who was the fiancée of one of the men, were killed by officers of the Nigerian Police Force after a confrontation that began at a nightclub in the city.
According to findings by a judicial commission of inquiry, Deputy Commissioner of Police Danjuma Ibrahim had made romantic advances towards Arebu at Grand Mirage Hotel on Port Harcourt Street in Abuja that night. After she rejected him, he left the club and told officers at a nearby checkpoint that he had sighted armed robbers in the area. When the six victims drove past in a Peugeot 406, the officers opened fire, killing four on the spot. The remaining two, including Arebu, were killed the following morning.
The police initially claimed the victims were members of a robbery gang that had fired on officers. A judicial panel of inquiry set up by then-President Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed that account as false and recommended the trial of the officers involved.
After more than a decade of proceedings, an FCT High Court in March 2017 sentenced two junior officers, Emmanuel Baba and Ezekiel Achejene, to death for culpable homicide. However, the court discharged Danjuma and two others due to what it described as insufficient evidence. Danjuma was subsequently reinstated into the force, paid salary arrears dating back to 2005, and later promoted to the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG).
The case was in court for 12 years before a verdict was delivered.
Written and produced by Linda Ikeji and directed by Toka McBaror, the film had its world premiere at NollywoodWeek Paris in May 2025. It stars Ali Nuhu, Gideon Okeke, Charles Lenny, and Femi Branch. A teaser has now been released ahead of the film’s wider rollout.
This is Ikeji’s second feature film based on a real Nigerian tragedy. Her first, Dark October, released in 2023, dramatised the 2012 Aluu Four lynching, in which four University of Port Harcourt students were killed by a mob after a false robbery accusation.
