Chidiebube Okeoma, a print media correspondent in Owerri, Imo State, has alleged being harassed and assaulted by some personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps attached to the Federal Girls Government College, along Okigwe road.
Narrating his ordeal, to TOAST FM’s newsmen, Okeoma stated that he was harassed by the NSCDC officers, who stood as security men to FGGC Owerri, while on a timely mission on Monday, December 6, 2021, to obtain information related to a viral video where a senior student of the school was seen bullying a younger student.
He added that the operatives, who thereafter arrested and bundled him to their command headquarters, tagged him an operative of the Eastern Security Network, the militant arm of the Indigenous People of Biafra.
“I asked them to take us to the vice-principal and they said he was not on seat. I asked them to take us to the next-in-command; they asked us to return next week. I told them that it was urgent, that by next week it will be a stale development. One of them emerged and started calling me a kidnapper and an ESN person. That I came to abduct their students,’’ Chidiebube narrated.
“That was when they started bullying me, about five or six of them. One of them hit me with the butt of his rifle at the back of my head. I was arrested, and even as I gushed out blood I was dragged to the command headquarters. There I was interrogated by a senior officer and released after,” he further revealed.
The journalist, who is still recovering after receiving medical attention, however, decried the response of an NSCDC spokesperson, whom he claimed, gave a false narrative while reacting to the incident in a radio programme in Owerri, and debunked his own side of the story.
He promised to pursue the case legally in search of justice.
“I am taking the case to the court. As a law-abiding citizen, with 12 years of professional experience as a journalist, and as one who has worked with integrity and honesty, there is nothing else I can do rather than go to court. My lawyers have been briefed. We will meet in court”, Okeoma said.
The print media journalist also lamented the reoccurrence of such incidents in the state which he said is targeted mostly at media personnel, whom he believes are seen as “enemies” by most security agents on “a mission to clamp down journalists”.
In stating possible causes for such reoccurring decadence, Okeoma cited the use of hard drugs by certain security officials as a major factor, which he claimed was also the reason for instigating such behaviour by the NSCDC personnel.
“I perceived Indian hemp from his mouth. I smelt it! And it is disastrous for people who are on drugs to bear rifles… At the slightest or at no provocation, you see them cock their rifles and ready to shoot. Society has been debased because of such personnel,’’ the journalist cried out.
State Commissioner of Police, Rabiu Hussaini, who had earlier addressed the correspondent, sympathized with him and stated that only the NSCDC could redress the wrong.
