On Friday, a petitioner broke down in tears while testifying before the #EndSARS panel in Abuja about how he was tortured and detained by police for 28 days in 2019.
Emenike Umezurike, administrator of the site, recounted how he was allegedly illegally arrested, detained and tortured by men from the Umuagwu Police Division in Rivers State.
The arrest by police, he said, was carried out in collusion with a man who had shown an interest in land that a neighbor had asked him to sell.
Mr. Umezurike recounted the traumas and health issues he has been dealing with since his release around June 2019.
Overwhelmed with emotions, the petitioner stopped speaking for a moment to calm down and regain a steady voice to continue his testimony.
“They tortured, starved and tear-gassed me for five days and refused to let me go,” she said through tears.
According to him, he now has to attend the hospital after developing some health complications due to prolonged detention.
“I can’t breathe properly or stay in an air-conditioned place because now I have pneumonia and I have to go to the hospital frequently for treatment,” he said.
‘How the police arrested, detained and tortured me’
Mr. Umezurike, based in Aba, Abia state, said he struck a deal to sell land while he was in Owerri, Imo state, supervising a construction project.
Returning to Aba for a weekend, he said a person showed an interest in the property while discussing it with a friend at a barbershop.
The person, he said, connected him with his brother, who said he had just returned from Europe and needed land ownership.
They agreed to meet in Owerri on May 6, 2019, but he was unaware that he was going to be arrested, the petitioner said. “I waited for him at a neighboring gas station on the afternoon of May 6 (2019) and he appeared with some armed men. They told me that he was under arrest and refused to give me a reason.”
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Umezurike testified that they took him from Owerri to Umuagwu village in Rivers State and demanded N5 million to release him.
“I told them I couldn’t pay that amount because I didn’t have any money. They had me there from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and came back later to see if I was ready to transfer the money,” she said.
Unable to pay the money, Mr. Umezurike said he was kept in solitary confinement without food or water, while police officers fired tear gas at him every night for five days at the police station.
He added that the man who lured him to the arrest later returned and claimed to be a tracker and had been following him since 2014.
Umezurike said he immediately disputed the claim, reminding her that they had first met a few days earlier. But the petitioner said it turned out that the phone number the man claimed to have been tracking was not his.
accusations of fraud
He told the panel that while he was in custody, the police introduced a woman, named Jessica Osunbo, who accused him of defrauding her of N5 million. He denied the charge, claiming that he had never met or done business with the woman.
He said he demanded to be allowed to call his family at the time, but the police adamantly refused and returned him to his cell.
Ms. Osunbo, he said, came back the next day and claimed that she had scammed him with N4. 5 million, contrary to what she had said the day before. She further said that she came back and claimed that he swindled her out of N4 million, not N4.5 million or N5 million as she had previously claimed.
He said that after a while, that same day, he was able to talk to one of the police officers who interceded for him, pleading “to send me to the other cell where there are other detainees so they can give me food. ”
“They sent me to the cell that day and I managed to give my brother’s number to one of the detainees who were released on bail, so that my family would come looking for me,” he added.
Useless intervention of the police commissioner
His brother took notice immediately and began making contacts until he was connected to the state police commissioner through a certain Francis Agaim, the petitioner said. Agaim was said to be the man Umezurike supervised his construction project in Owerri.
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Nigerian Police Force
The petitioner said that the police commissioner called the DPO of the Umuagwu Police Station to release him. “The DPO said that he would release me on Monday, but when my brother came back on Monday, the DPO said that I had been charged in court and that they should go to court and wait for my bail.”
However, when he arrived on Monday, he said the police refused to take him to trial. Instead, he testified that the police kept asking him to pay N5 million.
Break free
Since all persuasions to get him released by the police failed, Mr. Umezurike said that his family applied for the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the Nigerian Bar Association in Imo State, claiming his illegal arrest and detention.
He said he was released when the NHRC arrived at the Umuagwu Police Station and found him in the cell.
After his release, he said he got a lawyer to help press for justice. As a result of this, the petitioner said that on a Sunday he was arrested by officers from the Cameroun Barracks police station in Aba.
He also said that the DPO of the Umuagwu Police Station promised to withdraw the case brought against him in the Federal High Court, Umuahia, Abia State. However, the petitioner said that the police continued the case without his knowledge and later obtained an arrest warrant for him.
your sentences
In his prayers, Mr. Umezurike urged the panel to intervene in the matter and help get to the root of it, regretting that the charges brought against him by the police were still pending in the Umuahia Federal High Court.
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He added that he had requested the Certified True Copies (CTC) of the statements of Sunday and other suspects arrested by the Cameroon Barracks Police Station regarding the case.
He said a police officer at the Cameroun Barracks police station showed him the case file, the photograph and the statement from Sunday, but refused to release it as evidence.
He urged the panel to award him compensation of N100 million for the health conditions he developed as a result of prolonged detention.
The panel adjourned the case until March 9 for the defense of the police.
#EndSARS: one of the longest lasting protests of young Nigerians
The 11-member panel chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Suleiman Galadima was established by the NHRC after the October 2020 #EndSARS protest against police brutality, to investigate cases of rights violations perpetrated by the late Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other police units.
The panel will recommend compensation for victims and sanctions for police officers who made mistakes at the end of their hearing.