The Delta State Chapter of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, CDHR, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari, the Inspector General of Police, and the IGP Ibrahim Idris to immediately sack and prosecute a Police Sergeant, Unubi Christian and others over alleged harassment, threat to life, assault and battery of the group’s Assistant Public Relations Officer, Israel Joe. Addressing a press conference at the Secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Warri Correspondents’ Chapel, the Chairman of the CDHR, Comrade Kehinde Prince Taiga noted that the Police Sergeant violated the rights of its member as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Comrade Taiga pointed out that the call became necessary following the mobile police officer’s threat to eliminate him and his Assistant Public Relations Officer.
Comrade Taiga claimed that, “On the 17th of October, 2016 at about 8pm, the police in Okuokoko, before the Army check point, stopped a tricycle (keke) ordered everybody down, including Comr. Israel Joe.
“After extorting 50 naira from the tricycle rider, another mobile police named Sgt. Unubi Christian started his illegality.
“The Sergeant confronted Comr. Israel Joe and asked him ‘are you not Comrade Joe’? He answered in the affirmative and the next that followed was a slap and unending brutality. They were dragging him to the bush for reasons best known to them until his alarm attracted a little crowd.
“He put a call across to the Ebrumede DPO who ordered the policemen to take him to the station. They threatened that himself and the human rights chairman would be killed since the Comrades kept stopping their illegalities. Comrade Joe has since been receiving treatment in an undisclosed hospital”.
Comrade Taiga condemned the recent manning of illegal checkpoints as well as extortion of fifty naira from commercial tricycle operators and motorist in addition to arrest, seizure of phones and illegal searching of mobile phones of individuals without warrants.
Comrade Taiga also called on the police authorities to, as a matter of urgency, give him and Joe protection as they would continue to speak for the “oppressed masses”.
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