Former Anambra state governor, Mr Peter Obi, has declared himself ready to appear before the judicial panel of enquiry on police brutality in Anambra state to defend his alleged roles in the controversial demolition of Upper-Class Hotel, Onitsha and the arrest of the owner and some staff members of the hotel over alleged kidnap activities in 2013.
“I am waiting for the panel invitation. If they invite me, I believe those of us who have been in government should be able to answer for their actions, especially after leaving office because it will help in building a better country, and that’s what democracy is all about.” Obi, the vice-presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 general election, said this while responding to fallouts on the matter at the panel sitting in Awka.
Orient Weekend gathered that the petition of Chief Bonaventure Mokwe-Dikeh against the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and the former governor, had been overshadowing other cases filed before the Anambra judicial panel probing alleged police brutality in the state.
Mokwe-Dikeh had alleged that the ‘powers that be’ in the state framed and got him arrested by the defunct SARS operatives who, thereafter, subjected him to inhuman treatment. He also accused Obi of ordering the demolition of his hotel over unsubstantiated allegation of involvement in kidnap activities.
The petitioner who, even before the #EndSARS protest, had been in court with the former governor, filed a five-page petition to the panel in which he demanded a public apology from the state government for being branded a kidnapper and kept in SARS custody for 81 days without being charged.
In a recent conversation with AIT, Chief Mokwe-Dikeh traced his ordeal to August 1, 2013, when “A lodger, whom we later discovered to be an Onitsha native, lodged in my hotel at night and planted two rotten skulls and two rusted guns, all in one bag in Room 102. The next day, around 7am-7:30 am, SARS surrendered (sic) my hotel and demanded to search. On reaching the Room 102, the manager told them that the lodger wasn’t around, as confirmed by the hotel manifest submitted to the police department as the law demanded. SARS operatives ignored him and broke the door. On seeing the exhibits, my manager and I and everyone in my hotel that ill-fated day, were taken to Awkuzu SARS.”
Insisting that the whole event was arranged, he alleged that, after their arrest, then governor, “Mr Peter Obi arrived at the scene around 8/8:30 pm, ordered the immediate demolition of the hotel without investigation or asking me what happened. And they commenced demolition the same day.”
According to Mokwe-Dike, as far back as October 2014, in an interview published in the Vanguard newspaper, the incident was politically motivated by then governor, Peter Obi. “My senior brother, Gregory Mokwe, is a political enemy of the former governor. He was instrumental at the initial time Obi wanted to vie for governor of the state under APGA. Along the line, my brother fell apart with Obi because he followed Chekwas Okorie of the United Progressives Party, UPP. As if that was not enough, Gregory, who is my half-brother, hosted Chekwas Okorie’s new party and blocked the Old Market road.”
“They thought that the property (my hotel) they demolished was my brother’s. You see, my father had about five buildings along that road and he shared it among us. Gregory inherited the building next to my hotel. He never knew that I am from a polygamous family”, he said in the interview.
Countering the above, Mr Peter Obi observed, in a recent Arise TV ‘Morning Show,’ that it was not in the purview of his executive powers to issue commands to police. He went on to say that, rather than having a hand in Mokwe-Dikeh’s ordeal, he actually “saved the life of that gentleman.”
Going further, the former governor said: “I was in my office and I saw a security report that two human heads, with blood dripping all over, had been found in a hotel in Onitsha with a cache of AK-47 and that the people had surrounded to burn down the building.
“What I normally do in this type of thing is to manage the situation because we already had what we can call a rule that if we found a house being used by a kidnapper, we should pull it down. In this case, there were two human bodies; we are not even talking about whose heads were those. So, that was what happened, but again, I will leave it to the panel,” he added, declaring that he would be glad to clarify the matter when called upon by the panel.