Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ebonyi State Chapter, Comrade Ikechukwu Nwafor has been hospitalized at emergency ward of the Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki (FETHA) following his bitter encounter with Nigeria Police Force on Thursday.
Mr Nwafor slumped after he was released yesterday by police and was immediately rushed to the hospital where he was still receiving treatment at press time.
The NLC Chairman alongside other Labour leaders in the state, was tear-gassed, thoroughly beaten, thrown into a police hilux van and taken to Ebonyi state police headquarters where he was detained by Operatives of the Command.
His crime? Leading a peaceful protest staged by NLC members in the state against the increase in electricity tariff and fuel pump price by Federal Government.
The police were said to have intercepted the NLC members at Pastoral Centre along old Abakaliki-Enugu expressway and ordered them to move back to their office but they resisted and insisted on continuing the peaceful protest, a resistance which angered the police who used force on them.
Nwafor was seen rolling on the ground while the police officers made up of Anti-robbery Squad were hitting him hard just as other NLC members who were in the train had their fair share of the brutality.
Speaking on his hospital bed, Nwafor decried the action of the police saying they were handled like common criminals, alleging that they were indiscriminately attacked and their bus and phones seized.
He said” our greatest surprise was that this team was led by an Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations and he was commanding his men to deal with me and even when I was on the ground he was matching me and ordered about five of them to lift me and throw me into a hilux van”.
He alleged that the state Commissioner of Police,CP Peace Ibekwe Abdallah, confirmed through her responses when he was taken to her office she was the one who ordered the attack on him and his colleagues.
He alleged the CP said the Union undermined her office for embarking on the protest without getting her approval, an allegation he denied, saying he notified her through writing and the CP attested she received it.
Nwafor claimed even the men of Department of State Security Services, (DSS), sent to provide security for them were also attacked by police.
He said:”We even gave the police the letter before DSS and the DSS sent their men, they were on the crew with their vehicle following us and guiding what we were doing.
“But to our greatest surprise, police did not consider this, one of the DSS men was also attacked by police and his gun and phones collected forcefully from him. And before the CP, they checked his phone to make sure he did not video anything that happened”.
He said he has communicated the national leadership of NLC who has promised to follow up the matter.
The chairman however, accused the CP of acting a script which he was yet to understand recalling how the police had been trailing him prior to the incident.
But the Police CP Ibekwe denied that the workers were attacked.
CP Ibekwe who described the protest as an unlawful assembly which could lead to breakdown of law and order maintained that her men used minimal force to disperse the crowd adding that the protesters did not inform the Police before embarking on the protest. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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