Police Detain Student For Owning Two Facebook Accounts In Owerri

By Steve Uzoechi, OWERRI

Police detain student for owning two Facebook accounts

The
reign of extortion and intimidation of residents especially students
living within the Polytechnic community may have taken an alarming
dimension as multiple allegations indicate that the police formation in
the area sometimes engage in arbitrary arrest and detention of youths
and students in the area without regard to rights and due process.

A
student of one of the off-campus student lodges, Benny Udogu narrated
his ordeal in the hands of the rampaging policemen recently when he told
our correspondent how he was bundled into police detention for
allegedly owning two Facebook accounts.

The security man in the lodge was also arrested and handcuffed for daring to question the arrest of the student.

A
third occupant of the lodge, Chukwuka Ubani was also thrown into the
police bus in handcuffs for refusing to unlock his mobile phone for the
policemen, after he was beaten black and blue.

Narrating his
ordeal, Udogu said: “The incident happened around 8:15pm on that fateful
day. I returned from MCC road and due to the heat, I decided to relax
outside in the balcony (1st floor, upstairs) of our lodge and get some
fresh air while listening to music on my phone.

“Not too long
after, an armed man on mufti approached me from behind and due to the
brightness of his torch light I was unable to see his face, but his cap
had the Nigerian police logo on it.

“So he asked me what I was
doing sitting in the balcony, he also asked if I lived in the lodge and I
told him I lived in the lodge, that I just returned from town and
decided to chill outside a little.

“He demanded for my phone
which I gave him. He accessed my phone and gave it back to me and before
I could say thank you, another man on mufti who wore Police bulletproof
vest approached me and asked same question and I answered, he collected
my phone and ordered that I take him to my room and I took him to my
room and three more police men followed me making them a total of 4
policemen.

“They searched my room and found nothing; one
of them requested that I unlock my phone which I did. He accessed my
phone again and asked me why I have two Facebook accounts, I told him
that a friend used my phone to check his account so he logged into my
account, log out and tried to log into the second account and discovered
that it’s not in use (showing error message), so he called me a
fraudster. And they immediately bundled me downstairs into their bus and
drove me to their station (Ihiagwa Police Station) where they dumped me
in cell. They were deaf to all my pleas and explanations and did not
let me write a statement before they locked me up in their cell.

“I
was detained till the next day when I was allowed to write my statement
at about 11am. That was also when I was allowed to make a call to
whoever would come and bail me. However, I was unconditionally released
after the intervention of my elder brother through the Divisional Crime
officer.

Another student, Peter Ogbunka confided in our
correspondent that he was arrested and detained for about a week in the
same station because some policemen said his mouth smelled like that of
one who smoked Indian Hemp.

Said he, “I was on my way back home
and these policemen flagged down and stopped the motorbike (Okada) I was
on. They searched me and found nothing. One of them leaned closer and
said my mouth smelt of Indian Hemp and that was how I was detained for
more than a week for no just cause.”

Ogbunka who noted that an
asthmatic student, which he said were many on campus, would not last 20
minutes in the cell he was detained as ‘it was totally unhygienic and
beyond inhuman to hold any person there’.

The students called
on the Police high command to put some supervisory mechanism in place
to check the rampant excesses of these policemen ‘who play god with
human lives’ in the Nekede Polytechnic area.

Source:- Newtelegraphng