A member of the House of Representatives, Alex Ikwechegh, on Sunday who reportedly assaulted a Bolt driver who had arrived to deliver a package to his residence.
In a viral video recorded by the unidentified driver at Ikwechegh’s Maitama, Abuja home, the visibly upset representative for Aba North & South Federal Constituency (APGA) is seen repeatedly slapping and berating the driver.
The incident reportedly stemmed from the driver asking Ikwechegh to come outside to receive a package of snails.
During the altercation, Ikwechegh expressed that he found the request disrespectful given his social status, further threatening to make the driver “disappear” without repercussions.
“Do you know who I am? I can make this man (driver) disappear in the whole of Nigeria and nothing will happen. Can you imagine this rat? I am not going to give this boy one naira of my money.
“I am not going to call my policemen to beat you up, I will do that myself. I will show that I am a big brother to you, tie you up, lie you down and put you in my generator house. Do you know where you are? Because you saw me sitting outside here. Look at this monkey.”
When the driver requested the delivery fee, the politician slapped him multiple times querying if the driver knew who he was talking to.
“Do you know who I am I just slapped you and there’s nothing you will do. My name is Honourable Alex Ikwechegh, tell them (public) I slapped you. Call the Inspector General of Police that I slapped you, let him come. Record me very well,” he boasted.
In September 2023, the National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal, chaired by Justice Adeyinka Aderibigbe in Umuahia, Abia State, removed Emeka Nnamani, a Labour Party member, from office due to certificate forgery. The Tribunal ordered that a certificate of return be issued to Alex Ikwechegh, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate, who had placed second in the 2023 general election.
Previously, in 2015, the Appeal Court had removed Nnamani following a petition by Blessing Nwagba, ruling that he was not a registered member of APGA in his ward at the time of the election. The court also instructed the police to investigate allegations of certificate forgery against him, as he claimed to have graduated from the University of Port Harcourt.
Following the Tribunal’s recent decision, reports (not from The PUNCH) suggested Nnamani was disqualified due to certificate forgery and alleged a 10-year ban on his participation in elections.
Although the lawmaker has debunked and described it as a “lie from the pit of hell”, adding, “There was nothing like the court banning me, Emeka Nnamani, for 10 years from contesting an election in Nigeria. That’s a fallacy and a fabrication from the pit of hell, used regularly by opposition parties to pull us back.
“The records of what the court said at that time in 2015 are there. I do not want to bring the competence of the court into question because our jurisprudence is a perfect one and works according to the evidence available to them.
“As of 2015, there were lots of hiccups that my opponent took advantage of mentioning the institution they mentioned, and the institution has since then said that they had issues with the exams and records of the school, which led to misplacement of some records when they were moving from analogue to digital records keeping.
“There were cases of missing records and somebody went to that institution and took advantage of such a problem. But since then, the institution has cleared me,” he maintained.