Onitsha police Batter, strip Onitsha based rights Activist

www.odogwublog.com reports that some policemen attached to Onitsha Police Area Command, Anambra state, yesterday battered and stripped an Onitsha based human rights activist, Executive Director of International Human Rights and Equity Defence Foundation I-REF, comrade Justus Ijeoma.
 Narrating his ordeal in the hands of the police while receiving treatment at Onitsha General hospital, Ijeoma said, “I escaped death by the whiskers”.
He said, my cousin, Emeka Onyemaobi, told me that a woman borrowed N 200,000 from him and pledged to pay back after two weeks”.
“At the expiration of two weeks, the woman could not pay the money and the issue lingered for months before she issued my cousin with a cheque which was dishonored by the bank.
 My cousin consequently lodged the case with Onitsha police Area command, to know why she should give him a bounced cheque”.
According to him instead of the Investigation Police Officer, IPO, one Mr Chinedu, to find out why the  cheque was dishonored, told my cousin that he would recover the money from her but that he would collect 10 per cent interest of the money in question.
The position of the IPO did not go down well with  the complainant and he alerted the activist who on arrival at the police command, hard a heated argument with the 10 percent he is demanding  for stating that it  is not tenable.
On the process, the Station Officer to the command, one Mr Onyilo stormed the scene and ordered some policemen to push him out of the command and immediately they pounced on him, battered and stripped him.
He said, “ while they were manhandling me, the police Area Commander, Mr Yahaya Abubakar, ordered that I should be brought to his office and as I was being brought I was staggering because of the beating and the commander asked them to allow me to dramatize” .
      “I told him that I was not dramatizing that I was in pains and could not freely work because of the beating”.
As at the time of filling this report the activist was at the police command to make his statement