Police Publicly Assault Anambra Fire Chief at Checkpoint

Personnel of the Anambra State police Command, numbering about 10, at the weekend allegedly beat the state fire service boss, Mr. Martin Agbili, to unconsciousness.

Agbili was beaten up at about 10p.m. last Friday night while attempting to drive through a police checkpoint at the state police command headquarters with his wife and children on the vehicle.

The wife of the fire service boss, Mrs. Nma Agbili, who raised the alarm over the ordeal of her husband in the hands of the policemen, said her husband attempted to drive through a barricade erected by the police at the state police command after another vehicle had driven through but he was stopped.

“Despite identifying himself, he was stopped and the next action was that they started beating my husband. Please I am calling for help before they kill my husband.

“Right in my presence and our children, they are beating my husband, I think they want to kill him. It is the same police that usually call my husband at very odd hours of the night to report fire incidents, and he would leave us and rushed out, they are the same police that want to kill my husband,” she lamented in a video footage posted online.

The attack on the fire chief has generated uproar on the social media with a segment of the society calling for sanction against the police officers involved in the action.

Meanwhile, the state police command has denied that Agbili was manhandled by its men.

A statement by the Anambra State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Haruna Mohammed, reacting to the accusation, dismissed the alarm raised, alleging that the fire chief attacked policemen on duty, while also ordering his men to use a fire fighting truck to block the road because he was told to use an alternative route.

Mohammed said: “The attention of the Anambra State Police Command has been drawn to a write-up on the social media by one Martin Agbili of Anambra State Fire Service department that on the May 10 night he was assaulted by policemen while driving through the front of the Commissioner of Police office in the presence of his family. The publication is not only false but totally misleading.

“The real fact was that on the on May 10 at about 9p.m., a man later identified as Mr. Martin Agbili drove his vehicle towards the barrier of the state Police Command headquarters and insisted that he must pass through the barrier despite being told by the policemen on duty that motorists were not allowed to pass through the barrier at night due to security reasons.

“Instead of adhering to their explanation, the man became hostile and started raining insults on the police officers and threatened that he would teach them a lesson while his wife was shouting and videotaping them.

“Consequently, he called other fire service personnel, who came with a fire service truck and barricaded the road completely, thereby creating a scene and causing serious traffic congestion at the junction leading to the governor’s lodge. It took the intervention of the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of operations, who arrived at the scene and cautioned the man before he ordered his men to remove the fire service truck from the road and restored normalcy in the area.

“The police command wondered why a person of such status who was supposed to uphold the law was the same person violating it and his actions could have degenerated to total breakdown of law and order if not for timely intervention of the Deputy Commissioner of Police.”