The trouble of Ugo, a business
tycoon, based in Onitsha Anambra State, started in 2013.
Indeed, Ugo must have heard stories
of Nigerians having altercations with police, but never in his wildest dreams,
did he ever think he would become a pawn on police chess board.
Today, Ugo has joined the large
number of Nigerians, who sneered whenever they heard the mantra, “Police is
your friend.”
Ugo, a victim of police brutality,
torture and extortion, is a businessman dealing on long Span Aluminum roofing
sheets and accessories.
Speaking through his lawyer,
Executive Director of International Human Rights Defence (I-REF), a
nongovernmental organization, Barrister Justus Ijeoma, Ugo said that sometime
in 2013, in the hey days of kidnapping in Anambra State, he started receiving
mysterious and frightening phone calls from an unknown person.
Ugo said: “The caller threatened to
visit me and my family with all manner of violent attacks. He threatened to
kidnap and assassinate me. He made it clear that my wife, children and I were being
trailed. On several occasions, the caller would call, telling me the exact
place I was, what I was doing and what I was wearing.”
The caller did this, not just to
traumatise the family, but to also highlight the fact that they were
vulnerable.
The caller told Ugo that any attempt
to report the matter to the police would worsen his situation. The caller
claimed to be a notorious criminal known to SARS.
He also claimed that he had gone to robbery with Ugo’s brother living abroad. The caller told Ugo that he suspected that the money they made from the robbery was given to Ugo by his brother.
It was a period of psychological and
mental torture for Ugo and his family
“He said that he was going to wipe
off my entire family if I didn’t pay N50million,” said Ugo.
After brainstorming and discussing
with friends, Ugo was advised to pay the caller. His friends told him that it
was better than to lose his life or that of his family. Ugo reluctantly went
into negotiation with the caller and finally coughed up N20million.
Ugo thought the matter was buried
and forgotten until April 30, 2018, when three men armed with rifles stormed
his factory and attempted to bundle him into their Toyota Camry car. The three
men were dressed in plain clothes.
They were heavily armed with AK47
rifles. One of them ordered Ugo to hand his phones to them. They told Ugo to
quietly enter and that he should act as if they were friends. They threatened
to kill him if he makes any noise to attract attention.
Ugo, thinking they were kidnappers
or assassins raised the alarm, attracting attention of his wife, factory
workers and passersby.
Ugo reported: “It was at that point
they told me that they were policemen from Awka. I asked to see their identity card and also
sought to know why they wanted to abduct me in such a manner. This infuriated
them and they started beating me, trying to force me into their car. They
threatened to shoot me.”
When Ugo’s wife noticed that the
situation was snowballing, she called Ijeoma, unfortunately the lawyer was in
Netherland, attending a function. The lawyer however, was finally to speak with
the policemen. When he ascertained that they were truly policemen, he asked Ugo
to go with them. The policemen, however, refused to divulge to the lawyer the
reason for the arrest of Ugo.
They took the victim to their
station at Awkuzu, where they allegedly inflicted injuries on him through
torture as they attempted to force him to accept and admit being a criminal.
Ugo said: “At their station, I was
taken to their torture chamber, where I was hanged for close to an hour until I
passed out and was later revived. They first brought two blank sheets of papers
for taking statement and forced me to sign them before they started torturing
me.”
The lawyer said: “The officers
claimed that someone reported a case to them against the victim, making
reference to the encounter between the victim and the self-acclaimed criminal
(caller). The SARS men held the victim in their custody from April 30th
to 5th of May. Every explanation made by the victim to them that he
was a victim in the hands of those criminals fell on deaf ear. The victim even
promised to provide them with the bank account details of the criminals, into
which he paid part of the ransom money, but they policemen didn’t bother to
make any effort at arresting the criminals. Rather, they continued to torture
and threaten the victim that they were going to kill him unless he paid them
the sum of N20m. Their only interest was to criminally fleece out as much money
as possible from the victim.”
Ugo recalled "On the 5th day,
they brought me out and told me that my life would end on that day since I
refused to cooperate. Four policemen took me in their car (one of the names of
the SARS men is Alias). As soon as we were outside the compound, they
blindfolded, handcuffed and pushed me inside their car. They drove for about
two hours and stopped at a particular spot. They released my blindfold. I saw
that I was beside a borrow pit inside a bush. I had no idea where we were, but
I suspected we were in Edo State.
“They told me that my life had come
to an end as I would be executed shortly. Their leader told them that they
should execute me as soon as he gave the signal. I was crying and pleading but
they refused. They all pointed their guns at me.
“The last thing I remembered before
I passed out was the loud command and the rapid sound of gunshots. When I
regained consciousness, I saw that I was inside their vehicle with my face
blindfolded. They took me back, but
to a different cell.
“The inmates descended on me and
started beating me. I was brought out after about an hour. They told me that
they will take me back to the ground where I was nearly executed. I was crying
and pleading with them. They agreed to reduce the money to N10m. I pleaded that
they should allow me to pay N5m but they refused. One of them told me that his
salary was N2.5m per month, that N5m was too small. Before I was released,
the leader of the SARS team told me that I should thank my stars. He
said, ‘Your native doctor must be very powerful. If we had picked you the way
we planned it, this nonsense would not be happening now. We would have cleared
everything you ever acquired in life, all your properties, including your
beautiful wife and you would never get out alive.’”
Ijeoma said that the SARS men, aided
by their leader, a Superintendent of Police (SP), Mr Sunday Okpe, arrested Ugo
and kept him incommunicado from his wife and family for over two weeks,
plunging the family into unimaginable worries and anxieties.
In the course of trying to get
justice for the victim, Ijeoma discovered that Okpe and some of his men jointly
demanded N5million from Ugo, while Okpe separately demanded another N1m for his
personal pocket.
Thus, even though he shared from the
N5m, he still pocket another N1m for himself. He threatened to wipe out the
victim’s family if he so much as whisper about his arrest, detention, and
torture and N6m extortion to any soul.
Okpe’s bulletproof plans shattered
after Ijeoma, relentlessly pursued the matter and uncovered several unsavory
details about the arrest of the victim the policemen perceived to be a business
tycoon.
Ijeoman said that the SARS men
tortured and threatened to kill the victim unless he pays them the sum of N20m.
The activist further said: “On May
14, they carried out a mock execution of the victim. They blindfolded him, put
him into their vehicle and drove for a period of two hours. At a particular
location, which the victim suspected was somewhere around Edo State, they
brought out the victim and remove her blindfold. They told him that was the end
of his journey.
“They showed him a burrow pit, which
they told him was where they would waste his life like they had wasted others
in the past. The leader of that particular group on that fateful day, ‘Onye
army’ as he is called, directed his men to point their guns at the victim and
to unanimously fire at him when he issues the command. He ordered the victim to
keep walking towards the burrow-pit.
“As the victim got to the edge of
the pit, Onye Army, shouted fire! The guns of his men went off. They fired into
the air and the victim fell to the ground and almost passed out. You can
imagine how traumatic this must have been.”
After the mock execution, the victim
blindfolded again and returned to the station. At the station, the men told him
that his life was spared in order to give time to rethink. They told him that
he had been given less than 24 hours to comply with their demands.
The victim, petrified after his
experience, went into negotiation and accepted to pay N5m.
Ijeoma said: “The Commander, SP
Sunday Okpe, called the victim into his office and told him that the only
condition he would approve the N5m was for the victim to give N1m separately.
The victim agreed. Okpe personally threatened the victim that should he tell
anyone what transpired, that he and his men would kill and wipe out the
victim’s family.”
When the victim asked for account
number to transfer the money, the SARS men declined. They demanded for cash.
Meanwhile, this scenario was playing out on a Saturday. The victim promised to
bring the money on Monday, but they also refused.
Ugo was asked to transfer the money
into the account of Mr. Andrew Onwurah Mordili’s, a stranger to the victim.
They ordered Mordili to withdraw the money and bring the cash to them. The SARS
operatives didn’t want to leave any trace. They further insisted that Mordili
should be the victim’s surety.
Okpe asked the victim to bring his
own N1m himself in cash on Monday. When the victim brought the money, Okpe once
again, warned him to never, on any account, divulged the events and
transactions to anyone or Ugo’s family would be killed.
It was after Ijeoma returned from
Netherland that he got sucked into the case and started demanding for justice
for Ugo.
He petitioned the Inspector-General
of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris.
When Idris received the petition, he
ordered for the immediate arrest and detention of Okpe and some of his men.
Okpe and men were picked up at
Anambra State by detectives from Force Headquarters. They were whisked off to
Abuja.
Incidentally, Awkuzu SARS was
notorious for extrajudicial killings of suspects and torture for years.
Before Okpe took over the leadership
of Awkuzu SARS, many rights fighters and amnesty international had written tons
of petitions drawing attention to the extrajudicial killings and torture of
suspects going on at the unit.
When the then OC SARS, Mr James
Nwafor, was transferred out of the unit, there had been wild jubilations among
human rights fighters.
There was hope that a new OC would
sanitize the unit but that hope was dashed. Okpe took over Awkuzu SARS in 2016.
Asked what
exactly Ugo’s offence was, Ijeoma said: “The SARS men claimed
Ugo gave some people N20million in 2013. They said he should have reported the
case to the police. But the truth is that my client was trying to save his life
and that of his family. I asked what
crime my client committed in paying ransom in order to save his life and that
of his family. I told the OC to go and check the bank account numbers where my
client paid the N20m and ensure he arrest the criminals.
The OC SARS didn’t do
that, rather, he started threatening the wife of my client, asking why she
involved me in the matter. It was because of their threats that the woman
isolated me from the matter, giving them opportunity to keep the victim in
their custody and in isolation. While I was in Netherlands, I sent a lawyer and
another colleague working in my office, to the SARS, but
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