Victim of brutality cries to Buhari

Christopher Oji 

A Lagos businessman, Williams Nicholas Ejimozor, who was allegedly made blind by operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS) during interrogation, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State to come to his assistance as he is fast losing grip of life.

He made the appeal at the weekend while speaking with journalists in Lagos.  According to him, his life has been shattered as a result of the illegal arrest, detention and brutalization by the DSS officials for offence he did not commit.

The Rivers State born Ejimozor, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Willtracko Merchant Limited, a freight forwarding company, said his problem began on May 9, 2014 when about nine officers of DSS came to arrest him for an offence he did not commit.

The operatives were said to have stormed his business premises by jumping through the fence and ransacking his office searching for what he did not know.

He said that at the end of the search, the operatives displayed about 53 pieces of fake dollar notes, which he said was beyond his comprehension how they got it.

He was subsequently asked under duress to sign a document affirming that the fake dollar notes were found in his office.  As he did not keep such dollar notes in his office, he reportedly refused to sign the document.

The visually impaired freight forwarder who was brought to Crime Reporters Media Centre, Ikeja by his wife, Mrs. Chizoba Ejimozor, said that his refusal to sign the document he didn’t know any thing about was an excuse to brutally assault him. He was beaten mercilessly and subsequently taken to DSS office at Shangisha.

Based on this obvious uncompromising stance, Ejimozor was handed over to one of the operatives referred to as officer in-charge of torture who wore rings ostensibly meant to cause injury on any victim undergoing torture.

Since Ejimozor was not ready to compromise his position, the torture master insisted that he must comply with their instruction just as the operatives kept slapping him.

Ejimozor said he received no fewer than 57 slaps while undergoing torture.

At some point, he could not bear the beating any more. His blood pressure became abnormal just as his strength failed him, leading to his collapse.

“They used gun butt to brutalize me, hitting my head repeatedly and telling me that the only way they could leave me was for me to settle them with the sum of N15million since I was not ready to write my statement how they wanted it,” he said.

According to him, from the utterances of the DSS operatives, it was obvious that he was a victim of set-up by someone who possibly was jealous of his relative wealth and generosity to people around him.

As he argued with the operatives over the non-disclosure of his purported offence, little did Ejimozor know that he was only prolonging his days of ordeal as his ‘captors’ repeatedly told him that they were informed about his richness and nothing would make them to release him without parting with the N15million they were asking for.  To make life more miserable for him,  the DSS agents denied him access to phone and nobody was allowed to visit him.

After 25 days in the DSS custody and in a dying state, Ejimozor was moved to the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) of the police, Milverton Road, Ikoyi. According to him, SFU operatives obviously suspecting something fishy, chose not to accept him from the DSS so they had to take him to the State Criminal Investigation Department, (SCID) Panti where he was accepted and detained in D5 cell.

The police at Panti within a few days, preferred some charges against him and subsequently took him to Yaba magistrate court where he was granted bail.

Incidentally, the prosecutors in the matter continuously absented themselves from court on the days the matter came up. The magistrate subsequently struck out the case for lack of prosecution.

Due to the massive attack on him, particularly on the head, which had affected several parts of the brain, he suddenly lost his sight and could not see again.

The blind Ejimozor has, therefore, appealed to President Buhari and his state Governor Nyesom Wike to financially assist him to enable him take care of himself and his family.