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The Ajame Akpawfu autonomous community in Nkanu East Local Government Area, Enugu State, has denied claims that some of its vigilante members, known as Neighbourhood Watch, are affiliated with IPOB or terrorists.
This follows their arrest and being shot in the legs by operatives of the Enugu State police command.
The community is demanding their release, asserting the vigilantes’ innocence.
They also alleged that the police’s Octopus Tactical Squad commander “falsely labelled them after they refused to be exploited for financial gain, aiming to cause harm to the community.”
The PUNCH had recently reported that the Civil Rights Realisation and Advancement Network had submitted a petition to the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, seeking redress for five individuals who were allegedly subjected to torture and shot in the legs by police officers in Enugu State.
The five individuals, who are members of the Neighbourhood Watch in Akpawfu community, Nkanu East Local Government Area, Enugu State, are – Sunday Nwobodo (aka Divine Spoon), Onyeka Nnaji, Nnamdi Gabriel, Nweze Igweshi and Nwabunkeonye Nnamani.
After the report of the petition, the community said that the members of the Neighborhood Watch of Ajame Akpawfu who were detained for over three weeks after they were invited to the Octopus Tactical Squad police unit were arraigned on trump-up charge bordering on the offences of membership of the IPOB/ESN group, terrorism, murder, and armed robbery.
They were arraigned in the Enugu State Magistrate Court on September 19, 2024, and remanded in the Nigerian Correctional Custodial Centre, pending further trial.
According to the spokesman of the state police command, Daniel Ndukwe, the suspects confessed to the gruesome murder of two individuals and a series of armed robberies in the Akpawfu community and environs.
But, addressing a news conference in Enugu, the people of the community insisted that the arrested persons were innocent of the allegations and that they were never members of IPOB as claimed by the police.
They revealed that because of gunshot wounds inflicted on the vigilante members while in custody, the Nigerian Correctional Service refused to take them into custody and asked the police to go and treat them first.
The traditional ruler of the community, HRH Igwe Christopher Nnamani, who addressed newsmen on Tuesday, on behalf of the community, maintained that the people arrested from his community were people of integrity, an attribute with which the people considered before appointing them as members of the community’s vigilante operatives and consequently approved and satisfied by the Enugu State government.
He also noted that the detained persons had no hands in the killing of the two villagers, a development the community had made inroads into to get to the root of the problem.
According to him, the police had, at a general meeting of the community, given a list of the people on their wanted list, with none of the arrested persons being on the list
The monarch lamented, “Let them release our security operatives. These are the people who saved our community from the unknown gunmen during the period our community was in turmoil. Soldiers from the 82 Division of the Nigerian Army can attest to their innocence.
“Yes, two people were killed at a time we as a community were making genuine efforts to bring back peace to the community. Because of the dire implications of the killing in our search for peace, we as a community gathered together to find out the people behind the fresh killings. We were actually working with the affected families.
“But, while we were making those efforts, we were surprised that policemen from Octopus Command started arresting our security people.
“Even after the arrest of these security people, we got information about one of the members of the community who confessed openly that a man who had a land dispute with one of the deceased, had hired him to kill him, but he refused. We got him to report to the police and he did. But the police released him after one week and still held on to our neighbourhood watch members.
“The information some of the police were giving us was that a former inspector general police was interested in the matter, which is why they won’t release them.”
At a general meeting of the community, the police came there to announce the names of the people on their wanted list and none of these vigilant members were part of the list.
He therefore called on the Enugu State government to look into the matter and release the innocent people, who he said had been languishing in prison in the last one month.
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