The sheer savagery recently visited on a female corps member, Jennifer Edema Elohor, by some security operatives in Oba, Idemili Local Government Area of Anambra State, is an ignominious act that ought not to occur in a decent society. It is an oddly attack fit only for the den of a pack of brutes in the vilest jungle.
The viral video of the show of shame has since literally set the ever effervescent social media in an inflammatory buzz. The assault saga has ignited serious country-wide obloquy and outbursts from angry respondents, including civil society and human rights groups as well as community and political leaders.
The infamy committed by the Anambra State-sponsored Agunechemba security outfit operatives, indeed, defies logic. It is unthinkable that operatives in their right senses could be that vicious to a hapless and unarmed lady serving her fatherland.
According to reports, the operatives of the outfit, established under the Anambra Homeland Security Law, 2025, invaded a Corps Members’ Lodge and descended on the victim and some of her colleagues, accusing them of being internet fraudsters (‘Yahoo Yahoo’).
The video of the assault, which had occurred since July 23 but shared on Facebook only last Monday by the 360 Haven Foundation, showed the gun-wielding men brutalizing Elohor, a 28-year-old Zoology graduate of Delta State University, Abraka, tearing her clothes and stripping her completely naked.
The operatives’ bellicose attitude to the corps member and her colleagues tended to verge on the psycho. They behaved like typically egregious gangsters under a possible psycho-active influence.
According to Elohor’s lawyer, Cyrus Onu, not only did the operatives bloody the corps member, they poured vitriols and obscenities on her for daring to challenge them for breaking into their apartment so violently and ask for their identities, even though they allegedly refused to identify themselves. They were wearing mufti, heavily armed and masked.
“They (security agents) were banging the door, and she was trying to open the door. They just kicked the door open and it almost hit their (corps members’) faces … So, you can imagine how scared the ladies were. They (security agents) didn’t give any identification. They just said: ‘Come down, come down. You’re all thieves! You’re all ‘Yahoo’ people,” Oju narrated.
Even after the corps members had properly identified themselves with their identity cards and uniforms, the security guys insisted on arresting and whisking them away.
According to the lawyer, Elohor asked them to allow her to change into something appropriate if she and her colleagues must follow them. They refused and launched into further scurrilous vulgarities against her.
“That thing you’re trying to cover,” they allegedly threatened her, according to Omu, behaving like some gorillas that have just escaped from the zoo, “we’ll see it today. We’ll beat you up; we’ll rape you, kill you and dump you and nobody can say anything”!
Elohor, who spoke for the first time since the attack, in an interview she granted a weekend newspaper on Saturday, corroborated her lawyer’s account, recalling that when the operatives forced her and her colleagues downstairs from the three-storey building housing their lodge, “they insisted we follow them into their three vehicles.”
“I kept insisting they call the LGI (NYSC Local Government Inspector), and I think my voice was the loudest. One of them asked who I thought I was and then hit me first with a stick. The others joined in, slapping and beating me with sticks and guns.
“They tore my clothes and stripped me naked. Even when I tried to cover myself with the torn pieces, they dragged them off and continued torturing me … I begged them to let me wear something, but they refused, saying I was stubborn and a prostitute and would follow them like that.
“…. I was completely naked. I used my hands to cover myself. I was bleeding, but they didn’t care. They dragged me into their vehicle naked. They also dragged the other corps members, nine of us in total, into their vehicles. In the van, they harassed me and pressed my neck.”
Some of the corps members beaten and arrested alongside Elohor were identified as: Greatness Oyeh, Eze Ikenna Emmanuel, Anighoro Godspower, Amore Mordecai Feyisara, and Beauty Chimenum Wonodi.
The Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, was commendably responsive to the assault saga, having moved swiftly to identify and arrest eight of the Agunechemba security outfit involved in the ignoble act.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Community Security, Ken Emeakayi, said they(culprits), whom he acknowledged acted outside the mandate of Agunechemba security outfit, had been dismissed and would be handed over to the police for immediate prosecution.
“The Soludo administration will not tolerate any form of unprofessionalism, brutality or abuse of office by security operatives. Any officer found guilty of misconduct will face immediate dismissal and prosecution,” Emeakayi, whose office supervises the security outfit, said.
But these claims fly in the face of emerging scenarios, which point to subterranean moves to sweep the case under the carpet. Elohor’s account in her interview with the weekend newspaper, and the snippets from her lawyer, Onu, are revelatory and highly odious.
It is a wicked ironic twist that the NYSC Local Government Inspector(LGI), simply identified as Anayo, who ordinarily should be in the forefront of seeking justice for Elohor and her assaulted colleagues, appears to be the person behind the plot to bury the case, in cahoots with the Agunechemba security leadership, ostensibly to free his kinsmen.
According to Elohor’s account, when she and her colleagues were eventually released by the Agunechemba operatives, they called the LGI, briefed him and sent the assault video to him, as expected for him to seek appropriate redress for them.
However, the first statement that he allegedly uttered when he visited them that night was shocking and highly suggestive of his readiness to compromise.
“What has happened has happened,” he told the astounded corps members. “Some of you ladies are going to get married to men who beat women. So, this is training for you!”
The next day, the LGI took only Elohor to Awka, the state capital, supposedly to see the operatives who had been arrested. Elohor, who believed that the trip to Awka was stage-managed, said she was not shown any suspect in detention. They only brought some men to her and she was able to identify a few of them who participated in the assault on her.
But to her chagrin, the following day, she saw the same operatives who were supposed to be cooling their heels behind bars, walking freely on the streets, suggesting that they had been left off the hook!
She observed that when the LGI called some people earlier at the Local Government before he took her to Awka, he had conversed in Igbo throughout. The same thing repeated itself when they arrived Awka, where the conversations were also in Igbo, cutting her off completely.
Elohor’s abridged words: “He (NYSC LGI) invited us to the Local Government the next day and said the men had been arrested. He asked us to calm down. I told him I wanted to see them behind bars so I would be sure my life was safe. He kept turning me around…
“He then made some calls and spoke only in Igbo; so I couldn’t understand what he was saying. After some minutes, he said we should go to Awka to see the men who had been arrested. When we got to their office, everything was said in Igbo. Nobody spoke English. So, I was cut off from the conversations. If they wanted to talk to me, they would switch to English, but once I replied, they would revert to Igbo…
“I saw them (those who assaulted her)walking on the street the next day, and I looked at myself with all the injuries I had and breathed in heavily. It was so frustrating.
“I told my LGI about this new development, but he said he didn’t want to hear anything about it anymore. He told me he had already asked me to forget about it and that it was being handled. He even described the matter as an ‘old issue.’”
The lawyer, who spoke to the same newspaper, also alleged that the leader of Agunechemba security outfit attempted to silence Elohor and her colleagues with paltry sums of money as a payoff. Onu alleged that six of them were offered N10,000 each, while others were offered N25,000 and Elohor, N100,000.
He said although the money offered the victims was tagged as “compensation and transportation,” it was aimed at silencing them.
According to him, the money was offered the corps members in the presence of their LGI, who also allegedly assisted in deleting the video of the assault from their phones so as to get rid of the evidence.
“They tagged the N10,000 as ‘compensation’ and ‘transport fare’, but in actual truth, it was hush money because they told them not to say anything again about the incident. Otherwise, their lives depend on it and other kinds of subtle threats.”
According to Onu, the police too initially allegedly ignored the assault matter when it was reported to them. He said they did not do anything, even when the disturbing video was sent to them until the whole thing went viral.
These claims are deplorable and befuddling, should they be true. The role of Anayo, the NYSC LGI, in colluding to bury the case, is criminally reprehensible. It amounts to a seamy betrayal of the brutalized corps members under his care and a flagrant disloyalty to the NYSC management that employed him.
It is not certain if Governor Soludo is abreast of the latest undercurrent about the case, the contrivance to sabotage the quest for justice for the assaulted corps members. They must not be allowed to have their way.
The governor and the NYSC management should, therefore, cooperate and immediately initiate a closely supervised investigation into the matter, especially the roles of the NYSC LGI and Agunechemba’s leadership, to unnerve their wicked plot to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.
All the underhand deals to possibly grease palms with a view to making the assault suspects escape justice should be unnerved. Everyone, including Anayo, found culpable should be mercilessly dealt with under the law.
Then, the NYSC management should immediately redeploy Elohor and the others to safeguard their lives that are now obviously imperiled with the dangerous operatives let loose and the threats issued against them by the Agunechemba leadership, with the obvious connivance of their IGI.
The NYSC management should also expedite its plan to set in motion the “necessary administrative procedures … to assist the corps member (Elohor) in question in managing the physiological and psychological trauma resulting from this unfortunate incident.”
An irreparable damage has, indeed, been done to Elobor in the horrendous manner she was stripped naked. The stigma will assail her for a long time to come, if not for life.
So, she should be made to undergo a period of psycho-physiotherapy, as the NYSC management has hinted, to ameliorate the after-effect of the trauma she went through and the deep gash that the horrific assault has burrowed into her psyche.
There is hardly any compensatory payoff that can erase the tar of ignominy she has been smeared with. However, as a way of mitigating the effect, a hefty sum of money in compensation must be paid to her. And the vile operatives must be made to bear part of the cost of the of the compensatory payment.
Governor Soludo must walk his talk by ensuring that the illegally freed operatives are rearrested and prosecuted openly, alongside those who may have directly or indirectly aided and abetted their release.
The fiendish operatives were so shamelessly primitive in their conduct. The scally wags must pay dearly for bloodying an innocent lady and so heinously debasing her dignity.
But in the process of moving to punish them with the severest hammer that the law can muster is, they should be subjected to psychiatric testing to discern their true state of mind. Are they really normal or under any influence? The test will unravel.
In the final analysis, this saga, as it were, has thrown up the issue of training for local militia who are now assisting the regular police and other official security forces across the country.
The security maelstrom assailing the nation has impelled the necessity of engaging local militia to complement regular forces who are already stretched thin, as insurgents, bandits and other criminals are becoming more ferocious and sophisticated in their ghoulish onslaughts.
But how adequately trained are these quasi-forces being engaged in many fronts to complement crime fighting? It is doubtful if properly trained operatives would be as heinous as the Agunechemba guys who assaulted Elobor and her colleagues were.
Imagine if the operatives were to corner Elohor in a vulnerable setting, say in the night at a secluded place outside town? What would have happened is better imagined, with the atrocious manner they conducted themselves!
It is, therefore, imperative that these non- state actors being co-opted to complement our regular police and other security forces across the country be made to undergo proper and constant training, sound orientation and are imbued with modern civil engagement techniques to avoid the reoccurrence of unsavoury incidents as the corps members’ assault.
