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On Monday, many Christians celebrated Easter with their loved ones in their homes, the story was however different for Mr. Peter Onyiuke who celebrated Easter 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 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 at Monday morning.
Mr. Umar who had earlier ordered the beating of a private security guard Mr. Sargwak at the plaza had denied the allegation in an error-filled statement issued by the tribunal’s press and media unit, on March 30, despite video evidence.
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.
