Unlike many Christians who celebrated Easter with their loved ones in their homes, Peter Onyiuke marked his in the custody of the police at Wuse Zone 2 in Abuja, following his arrest a week ago allegedly on the instruction of the chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Danladi Umar.
Mr Onyiuke is a phone repairer with an outlet at the Banex Plaza in Wuse, Abuja, where Mr Umar assaulted a security guard, Clement Sargwak, on March 29.
It was gathered that Mr Onyiuke became a target of arrest following a separate quarrel Mr Umar had with him in the middle of the pandemonium resulting from the assault on the plaza’s security guard the same day.
The squabble was said to have ensued while Mr Onyiuke was trying to return Mr Umar’s phone which he helped the CCT chairman to pick after it fell to the ground without him knowing.
Many hours later that day, that act of kindness was said to have been rewarded with a beating by security agents on the order of Mr Umar, whom eyewitnesses said accused Mr Onyiuke of being rude in his manner of returning the phone.
Eyewitnesses told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr Onyiuke was harassed, manhandled, and beaten by the security officials before they took him away in what appeared to be a vengeful move orchestrated by Mr Umar long after he unleashed the now-widely condemned attack on the plaza’s security guard.
Our reporter confirmed that Mr Onyiuke who was arrested for a yet-to-be-ascertained offence, was still being held by the police without bail or trial as of Monday morning.
This newspaper had reported how Mr Umar was caught on camera assaulting Mr Sargwak, a security guard deployed to the plaza by its employer, Jul Reliable Guards Services Limited.
In the five-minute video footage that went viral, the tribunal chairman was seen slapping and kicking the 22-year-old after an altercation ensued between them over the space where Mr Umar parked his car.
Mr Sargwak later told PREMIUM TIMES that he was beaten and detained at Maitama Police Station because he opposed Mr Umar’s wrong parking on the premises of the plaza.
Despite video evidence, the CCT chairman denied the assault allegation in an error-filled statement issued by the tribunal’s press and media unit, on March 30.
The CCT chairman, who also accused Mr Sargwak of being rude in their parking space squabble, insisted in the statement that it was him who was assaulted by a mob of ‘Biafran boys’, a characterisation that was widely condemned as a slur on a particular ethnic group.
In separate statements on Sunday, while Mr Umar appeared to double-down on his objectionable claim, by saying his assaulters chanted “secessionist and sectional slogans”, the head of CCT’s press and media unit, Ibraheem Al-hassan, apologised for the “embarrassment” caused by what he described as his “unedited draft”.
Mr Sargwak was released the same day of the incident, following the intervention of the plaza’s lawyer, but Mr Onyiuke has remained in detention since then.
How Onyiuke was manhandled, arrested
Mr Sargwak, in his interview with PREMIUM TIMES, said security officials suspected to be operatives of State Security Service (SSS), in company with Mr Umar, returned to the plaza after they were done at Maitama Police Station on March 29, to arrest Mr Onyiuke.
”As we returned to the Banex Plaza in the evening at about 7 p.m. I saw him (Mr Umar) with my two eyes open. They came to arrest a man, Peter Onyiuke, who had helped him pick up his phone and immediately returned; because his phone had dropped on the floor when he was beating me,” Mr Sargwak had told our reporter.
From the accounts of eyewitnesses who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES, it turned out to be that while Mr Umar was locked in fight with Sargwak, the CCT chairman was also having a quarrel with Mr Onyiuke.
An eyewitness, Joshua Luke, said Mr Umar was probably angered by the tone of Mr Onyuike’s conversation while trying to return his fallen phone to him.
“Onyiuke stood from a distance and looked him in the eye, boldly, and said Oga come get your phone, the man (Mr Umar) who seemed angry, in response to Onyiuke, said ‘ are you talking to me, are you alright? Onyiuke replied, ‘yes, I said come and take your phone if you don’t want to take it, leave it,’” Mr Luke said in his recollection of the events preceding Mr Onyiuke’s arrest.
He added, “Onyiuke then handed the phone over to a Banex police officer who then gave it to the man (Mr Umar). After the phone was handed over to him, Onyiuke asked him why he did not have the courtesy to thank him. The man asked why he would say ‘thank you’.”
Mr Luke said, the CCT chairman, who had presided over the trials of high-profile public officers, including a former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), and a former Senate President, who were accused of breach of code of conduct for public officers, began to brag about his position in the country and how he had “dealt with” notable persons in the past.
He added, “The man later started saying many things like he would jail Onyiuke for 25 years without trial.
“It was at that point, Onyiuke called his bluff and told him to do his worst as he was not God.
“The man ordered one of the Banex police officers to arrest Onyiuke, but they were reluctant to carry out the arrest due to the familiarity the police officers had had with people at the plaza. The police officer just held him (Mr Onyuike) gently by his trousers and kept warning him to keep quiet.”
He said when police officers attached to Mr Umar arrived at the plaza, the CCT chairman ordered them to arrest Mr Onyiuke, who immediately fled the scene.
“Onyiuke did not touch the man. The only thing between them was just the way he spoke to him to come to collect his phone. It was the same phone the man used to call his security details at his home to come to pick up the security guard (Mr Sargwak),” he said.
In what came as a corroboration of the account earlier given to PREMIUM TIMES by Mr Sargwak, Mr Luke said it was near closing time at the plaza when the earlier incident had been long forgotten that some gunshots were heard on the premises.
“I heard gunshots and I went outside the plaza premises only to find Onyiuke struggling with officers of the SSS; his clothes were torn to his boxers,” he said.