Officials of Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra (Ocha Brigade) and Association of Tricycle Operators, Owners and Dealers Anambra State (ATOODAS) battle over allegations of the murder of an ATOODAS member by personnel of the former, Special Correspondent, OKEY MADUFORO, reports.
Gloom enveloped the hitherto bustling commercial city of Onitsha, Anambra State, on Thursday, October 20, when 31-year-old ChukwunonsoUyanwa was gunned down by persons suspected to be officials of the state’s environmental task force, Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra, popularly known as Ocha Brigade.
TheNiche gathered that the deceased and his colleagues of Association of Tricycle Operators, Owners and Dealers Anambra State (ATOODAS) had concluded their revenue drive for the day and were taking a break when an official of Ocha Brigade stormed the area in company of other personnel and shot him. He reportedly died on the spot.
When it dawned on the trigger-happy official that Uyanwa was dead, he jumped into a waiting vehicle that they came with and fled for Awka, the state capital. Onitsha has not known real peace since the incident.
Residents told TheNiche that the killing of Uyanwa marked the climax of a lingering face-off between the leader of Ocha Brigade, Kenneth Okonkwo, and the patron of ATOODAS, Wilfred Ezike, who had earlier won a legal dispute against the task force.
In a curious twist, however, shortly after the killing of Uyanwa, the Fegge Police Station, Onitsha, allegedly tagged him a member of the Movement for the Actualisation of
a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), apparently to dismiss him as a miscreant.
Ezike would, however, have none of it. According to him, “I swiftly went to the police station to explain to the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in charge that the boy worked for me and was not a member of MASSOB.”
The MASSOB tag on the deceased, he added,alignswith the antics of Ocha Brigade in the state, adding that members of his group were revenue collectors for the Anambra State Government with the approval of the Secretary to the State Government (SSG). He stressed that in the performance of their duty, his colleagues had regularly been molested by the Ocha Brigade personnel.
“At every turn, Kenneth Okonkwo and his boys have been terrorising us and we have always complained to the appropriate authorities,” he alleged.
Ezike, in a petition to the Commissioner of Police, Sam Okaula, detailed instances of unwarranted provocation against his members by the |Okonkwo-led Brigade.
In the petition, which was also addressed to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Assistant Inspector General of Police for Zone 9 and signed by ChumaOguejiofor, a barrister, Ezike alleged that on Thursday, October 20, 2016, Okokwo, in company of another Ocha Brigade official, Femi Farb and his colleagues shot and killed Uyanwa for no justification at Niger Street, Fegge, Onitsha.
“Indeed, while Mr. Kenneth Okonkwo issued the directive for his cold-blooded execution, Mr. Femi Farb carried out to the letter the shooting of the deceased with a pump action gun. He had shot the deceased at close range till life ebbed out of him,” the petition added.
It listed witnesses of crime, stressing that Uyanwa’s assailants did not know that they would be recognised by the witnesses that even had identified them and had made a report of the incident immediately to theFegge Police Station.
Ezike and members of his tricycle operators’ union demanded the immediate apprehension of the killers, in addition to a dispassionate investigation of the incident and their prosecution.
Explaining his own side of the story, Okonkwo, the Commander of Ocha Brigade, regretted what befell Uyanwa, but stressed that officials the Ocha Brigade did not go to Onitsha on the day of the incident, lamenting, “today, they are accusing us of killing the young man”.
Okonkwo added: “I called the police in Onitsha and they told me that there was a conflict among some hoodlums in Onitsha, only to discover the death of somebody. I also cross-checked my men and they were all in Awka capital, not in Onitsha.
“You must also know that we have directives from His Excellency, Governor Willie Obiano, to carry out operations in the state, and part of our job is to stop the illegal collection of taxes which one Wilfred and his group are doing. But to say that my men killed somebody is totally false.”
Okonkwo denied knowledge of Femi Farb, alleged to have pulled the trigger on Uyanwa.
“There is no member of Ocha Brigade known as Femi,” he emphasised.
At the Anambra State Police Headquarters, the
Commissioner confirmed the incident, but remarked that the Command was still investigating the matter.
He did not confirm if the killer of Uyanwa was a staff of Ocha Brigade or not, but promised that after official investigations the command would come up with a clearer and better picture on the matter.