A stakeholder in Okaria Village of Amachi Community in Abakaliki Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Anayo Agah has accused one Inspector Patrick Mbam of the state command of the Nigeria Police Force of allegedly co-opting some youths into a cult group and using them to disrupt the peace in the area.
Agah therefore called on the State Commissioner of Police, Augustina Ogbodo to urgently intervene in the matter by arresting and prosecuting the alleged erring police officer in order for the indigenes to experience peace.
He expressed worry that Mbam, working with DC Ops but attached to one of the judges of Ebonyi State High Court as an orderly, asks some recalcitrant youths to be attacking innocent people in the community.
“About the month of October, 2023, a group of persons led by Inspector Patrick Mbam, started disrupting the peace of Okaria village, Amachi community in the Abakaliki Local Government Area of Ebonyi State. He gathered drug addicts and Indian hemp smokers and he began to indoctrinate them into cults and administer oaths on them. When we noticed this and then urged them to stop, they didn’t listen to us, but were going about causing havoc in the village.
“Specifically, I am aware that between the months of September and October, Barrister Luke Nkwegu wrote a petition to the Commissioner of Police in the state, detailing what was happening and the involvement of Inspector Patrick Mbam in the incidents. There had not been a reaction to that petition; or maybe the police were planning to do something.
“Then, on November 14, 2023, these village miscreants went on a rampage and started destroying things in the village. Their annoyance was that one of them was arrested, because he went to Barrister Nkwegu’s farm, uprooted the palm trees in that farm and destroyed them. When that happened, the villagers started pleading with him to return the palm trees and he refused.
Then, the police arrested him. These miscreants led by a police Inspector went on rampage.
“And then, they came to my house, chased me away from my house with their machetes and guns. I ran out of my house, they destroyed my house, looted everything that was in that house.
They went to my house in the village and brought down the entire building and destroyed everything there. I am a farmer and I deal in insecticides too. They looted all the insecticides in my shop. They looted my 253 100kg bags of rice. They also held my mother, my wife and my little baby of not more than one month old hostage.
“Not satisfied, they went to Barrister Luke Nkwegu’s father’s compound and vandalized his house. They destroyed Nkwegu’s house and smashed the roof, windows and doors. They proceeded to his brother’s compound and destroyed and brought down the house he was building.”
They went round like that across the village destroying the houses and other valuables of their perceived enemies. The Police were alerted of these incidents. But the miscreants led by Inspector Patrick Mbam mounted about seven roadblocks with the intention of stopping men of the Nigeria Police Force from accessing the village, to halt their crimes. The policemen were led by the SWAT Commander at the Ebonyi Command.
“He knew the number of roadblocks they dismantled before they got into my village and on entering the village square, they saw Inspector Patrick Mbam holding a machete while also commanding his ‘boys’ and he was arrested right there alongside others.
“At the Police Headquarters Abakaliki, investigations were carried out on them. Both himself (Inspector Patrick Mbam) and his civilian cohorts were heavily indicted by the police investigations. Part of the rice they looted, that is a tipper load of about 63 100kg bags of rice, was intercepted by the same team in another village where they were going to hide them,” he narrated.
Agah lamented that with evidence of the crimes allegedly committed by Inspector Mbam and his gangs, they were not charged to court.
When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of Ebonyi State Police Command, DSP Joshua Ukandu said he was not aware of the incident and requested for some time to make enquiries.
