A police officer identified simply as Zeus, attached to the Eziama Police Station in Aba, Abia State on Monday night brutalised a man who gave his name as Samuel Okoye on his way back from a hospital with his sick wife.
According SaharaReporters, Okoye while narrating the incident to said that the police officer stopped him in front of the station around 9.30pm and after looking into his car, the policeman asked him (Okoye) to “find him something.”
But Okoye who said he had spent all the money he had in the hospital, told the policeman, “Officer I no get anything here with me. We are coming back from the hospital. Look at my madam, she is carrying a string in her hand.”
He said that the policeman got angry and then asked, “wey your paper”?
He gave him the papers.
According to Okoye, the policeman put the papers in his pocket without checking anything on them and after waiting for some minutes without any response from him, “I asked, officer how far? Can I go and drop my woman and come back tomorrow morning?
“Next thing he did was to cock his gun and told me that if I moved, he would fire me. I said to him, “officer what is the matter? My papers are ok.” He started saying that as he was there, did I think that he was happy?”
The victim told SaharaReporters that there were two other people who were also held by the same policeman for refusing to “find him something” before he arrived at the station but the others insisted that they would not be forced to give him money.
Okoye said, “Our papers are okay. All of us were there. And my woman was begging him. He said that I was trying to prove stubborn, and I said, officer, I am not proving stubborn. I don’t have anything left with me. He started insulting me and asked if I was the one that sent him to the police academy.
“Then I called a police friend that I knew and narrated the whole scenario and he asked me to give the phone to the policeman but initially, he refused to collect the phone but later, he collected and spoke with my friend.
“Fortunately, my police friend knows him. After answering the call, he seized my phone and told me that I wanted to prove to him that I know policemen. He even told my woman that he could do anything to me and the highest thing that would happen is that he will be asked to apologise to me. Nothing will happen.”
From 9.30pm, Okoye said Officer Zeus kept him and the sick wife at the station till 1am, when he told the police officer what he was doing was not good.
“He started flogging me and slapping me as he wanted. He said that he would shoot me. Luckily my police friend chatted with me on my Android phone. I told him that he was shooting a gun and that he said he would kill me. My friend quickly rushed and came to the point and started begging him to leave me. He was boasting that if not for the sake of my friend, he would shoot me and tag me an armed robber and my car, a stolen vehicle.”
He said that it was after the intervention of his police friend that officer Zeus allowed him to go at around 1:30am.
