Father, police contest fate of‘detained’undergraduate son
A retired nurse is looking for his son who is “missing” from police detention in Benue State.
From Hope Abah, Makurdi
Life could not have been any moment darker for Mr Abel Ameh, than now. A retired nurse who had everything going well for him, before the traged which had befallen his family struck some months ago.
Ameh, a father of 22-year-old undergraduate of the Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo in Okpokwu Local Government Area of Benue State is currently traumatised over the sudden “disappearance” of his son, Abel Ngbede from the custody of the police in Adoka ‘B’ Division.
The grieving father has alleged that his “missing” son must have been murdered three days after he was taken into detention for an offence falsely levelled against him by some individuals in their locality.
According to Ameh, the harrowing experience began, precisely on July 2, this year, when a mob he alleged to have been led by five individuals including a female whose name was given as Franca stormed his house at Adoka Centre in Otukpo Local Government Area and arrested his son on allegation that he beat up the said lady, (Franca) and pointed a gun at her.
Ameh in a petition written by his counsel E.J. Igoche, Esq. of Owofu Chambers in Otukpo to the state’s Commissioner of Police explained that he was at his clinic in Adoka when the five people led the mob to his house to seize his son.
He said his son told him at the police station where was detained that Franca’s boyfriend framed him that he was dating her. According to him, the police refused to allow him bail his son and brought his next the next day with a search warrant without finding anything incriminating.
“By the fourth day of his detention which was July 5, I went back to the station to still plead with the police for the release of my son and to my greatest surprise discovered that Ngbede was no longer at the station,” he said.
However, upon enquiry, he was told by the police, that his son was no longer with them while another officer advised him to reach out to the Area Police Commander’s office in Otukpo. He still could not find his son there either. However, as contained in the petition which was copied to the Inspector General of Police, the Assistant Inspector of Police, Zone 4 in Makurdi as well as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Ameh who urged the mentioned authorities to act in the interest of justice in order to fish out bad eggs from the police threw light on why he believed that he son had been killed in custody.
He claimed that a man who was a friend to his son, arrested at his farm on July 3, on suspicion of being in possession of a gun and was kept in the same police cell where Ngbede was held, confided to have seen the “lifeless” body of his son in the police van the following day while on transit to Makurdi for interrogation.
“The young man who had since been released from detention also confided in me that on getting to Makurdi, the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) rejected the dead body of my son and the police in conjunction with the names By the fourth day of his detention which was July 5, I went back to the station to still plead with the police for the release of my son and to my greatest surprise discovered that Ngbede was no longer at the station confederated buried my son in an unknown grave till date,” Ameh said.
Besides, he said that insider information explained that his son was taken from custody at about 4:00am on July 4 and allegedly murdered by the police.
The traumatised father further explained that he had gone round all police stations in Otukpo and Makurdi but no one could yet give him any concrete information about the whereabouts of his son who was a HND II student and fourth son of eight children.
“When I returned to Adoka, I overheard people telling a parish priest that my son was involved in a robbery incident and had been buried between Adoka and a neighbouring community of Ogobia-Ugboju in Otukpo local government,” Ameh added.
His (Ameh) lawyer, averred in the petition that he personally went to the police stations in Adoka and Otukpo to inquire about the whereabouts of his client’s son and was informed by the DPO that the said Ngbede was alleged to have committed robbery and since they do not treat robbery cases at the station had transferred him to the SCID in Makurdi.
The lawyer noted that his client was at the SCID in Makurdi on July but was told that Ngbede was never brought to them and don’t know his whereabouts neither was any case about him reported to them.
Based on these findings, E.J Igoche, Esq. maintained in the petition that, “It is now very clear that my client’s son Abel Ngbede was dastardly murdered by the police at Adoka B Division in connivance with their cohorts as can be seen from the above story and buried in a secret grave yet to be known to my client.”
Igoche on behalf of the petitioner therefore, appealed to the Benue State Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, to use his good offices to bring the perpetrators of the alleged murder of the undergraduate to justice and to unravel the secret grave where he (Ngbede) might have been buried.