www.odogwublog.com reports that the Anambra State commissioner of police Garba Baba Musa has ordered a full scale investigation into the manhandling of a journalist , Mr Peter Okolie of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and a driver by his men in Awka.
Musa refferred
the matter to the Area Command of the Nigeria Police in Awka for appropriate action to be taken to broker
peace between journalist, shuttle driver and the police in Anambra state .
The Authority reports that it was a show of shame and
derision at Aroma junction Awka as an errant police traffic warder named
Mmaduekponam Martins with staff number 10142 brutally manhandled a
correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria on duty ; beating the journalist to
a pulp .
The NAN correspondent who was taking a shot of another
police female traffic warder fighting
with a shuttle driver in his vehicle , was spotted by officer Mmaduekponam who
pounced on him , tore his T-shirt and unleashed punches on his face while
eye-witnesses expressed shock at the level of rascality displayed by the police
officers .
The ugly incident which occurred at the weekend , left
the NAN correspondent and the driver of UNIZIK shuttle with bruises and
injuries on their faces allegedly
inflicted on them by the fierce looking police officers .
Narrating his ordeal in the hands of the police
officer who descended on him like a hungry lion , the NAN correspondent stated
that he was filing a report at a near-by Cyber Cafe when he spotted a police
officer in a duel with a shuttle driver
in his vehicle and proceeded to take
photographs of the incident , when his assailant abandoned his duty-post and
engaged him in a physical combat threatening him to relinquish his camera which
he protected from the terror of the marauding police officer .
The journalist said that officer Mmaduekponam had
threatened to kill him if he refused to release his camera because he took
photographs of his colleaque while fighting with the shuttle driver .
The UNIZIK
shuttle driver whose father is also a senior police officer at Ajali
Division Orumba-North said Obi Amaka whose staff number is 14118 invaded his
vehicle in a bid to remove his ignition key over the latter’s inability to '
roger ' her .
He said it was not the first time she insisted that he
would ' settle ' her saying that it has become the stock-in-trade of officer
Obi Amaka and her colleaque to terrorise and intimidate bus drivers , tricycle
operators and a host of others operating within Aroma axis into giving them
money without reason .
It therefore took the timely intervention of the
Nigeria Union of Journalists Anambra State Council to protect the NAN
correspondent and the shuttle driver from further assaults even though another
police officer named Mbele Nicodemus bearing AK47 rifle threatened to shoot
another journalist in the midst of the pandemonium .
When journalists tried to reach the Police Public
Relations Officer of the Anambra state police command Princess Nkiru Nwode to
report the situation to the command , her mobile phone was switched off . While
further attempts were made to report the matter to the Divisional Police
Officer of the B Division Awka where the
errant traffic warders emanated from , even as efforts of the NUJ delegation to
the station was also frustrated .
Police Molest Journalist, Mr Peter Okolie , Shuttle Driver In Anambra
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Sunday, February 25, 2018
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