Drivers protest against Ebonyi commissioner's brutality in Abakaliki

BY SOLOMON OKEMINI 

Members of the United drivers association (UDISAM) in Ebonyi State have in the early hours on Friday, protested against the State Commissioner for Capital City  Development, Barrister Peter Onyekachi Nwebonyi.

he drivers protested over what they called Nwebonyi's recent physical assault on their members by injuring one Mr Friday Agwu, a driver who hails from Ezza North Local Government Area of the State.

The drivers, who blocked Enugu/Abakaliki highway for over an hour, protested against the destruction of their vehicles and caused a heavy traffic jam on the highway which attracted the presence of the Police to disperse them.

Mr Friday Agwu , a driver and the victim who narrates to our reporter, said he was waiting on his mechanic at the popular Obodo Park, opposite Amusement Park in Abakaliki town, when suddenly the Commissioner and his team of boys allegedly came and descended on him.

"I was just waiting for my mechanic to come and fix my vehicle at Obodo park, and the Commissioner came with his boys and accused me of loading passengers at the park, they started beating me with plank and broke my head," he said.

Chibuzor Okeh, an eyewitness also lamented over the alleged brutal actions of the Commissioner and his boys, particularly towards traders and commercial drivers including passers-by in the capital city.

According to him, "the driver was just a passerby, he's on chatter and waiting for someone, they asked him who is the person loading here? 

 "And he said he doesn't know, the next thing is for them to decend on him, gave him injury, broke his windsscren and beat him up like a thief.

"Barrister Onyekachi Nwebonyi is the cause of all the problems in Abakaliki, as it stands, he mobilized his boys to go from one place to another, beating drivers, okada riders and even passerbys."

He disclosed that Nwebonyi had  destroyed so many vehicles including his own as well as other people's businesses and regretted that a public officer would behave as such.

Other victims included Agatha Ukpai, a widow who sells food at Obodo Park also narrated her bitter encounter with the Commissioner and said the Commissioner ordered his boys to throw her cooked food into a gutter, while threatening her with guns live. 

She explained that there was no prior warning to them against selling food in the park by the Commissioner, and regretted why a public officer would go out of his ways to make life miserable for the common people in the state.

Recalled that the commissioner has been petitioned by some residents of Abakaliki capital city over destruction of their valuables, of which, the State House of Assembly under the watch of Speaker Francis Ogbonna Nwifuru set up adhoc committee that handles the matter but upon report not yet delivered, other complaints began raging in the state this weekend.

Efforts made by our correspondent to reach the Commissioner at the time of filing this report proved abortive.