By Christopher Oji
No fewer than 15 masked men armed with automatic assault weapons and dressed in the uniform of Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), along with thugs who claimed to be policemen, last weekend, raided a popular hotel on Ago Palace Way, Lagos.
The uniformed men and the thugs that accompanied them subjected the hotel’s customers and visitors to hours of torture, after which they forcefully removed a giant generator inside the hotel and took it away.
It was alleged that the uniformed masked men and thugs who were reportedly clutching sophisticated weapons stormed Seafortunes Hotels Limited around 4am and started shooting at random, after which they broke into most of the rooms in the hotel and dispossessed lodgers of their valuables. Reports said they were frantically asking after the owner of the hotel but when they could not get at him, they held the people on site hostage for over one hour, after which they broke into the generator room and used a heavy-duty crane to cart it away.
According to the chief executive officer of the hotel, Nwukwa Okechukwu Fortune, “Last Sunday, by 4am, I got a call from one of my customers that some armed men in masks invaded my hotel. They held down all our staff and security men. They went to the generator side and started dismantling it.
They first asked after me and after they were told that I was not around, they went to the generator side and started dismantling it and laid everybody down, including my customers. A neighbour whose car was blocking the access to the generator side was chased to his apartment and manhandled.
“They brought a heavy-duty truck and put the generator inside and left. From accounts given by my workers, the men that invaded the hotel were about 30. Fifteen of them were clad on Civil Defense uniforms and masked, while others were touts who initially claimed to be policemen in order to gain access into the hotel. I was able to identify them as men of the Nigeria Civil Defense after watching the hotel’s CCTV, which recorded everything that took place in the hotel. When they left, they released everybody.
“From the investigations so far, we were able to capture one man called Nicholas, who once had an issue with the previous manager of this place. The incidents have two segments. The first segment was a business transaction between the people whom this business establishment was leased to. That is, Mr. Ogbonna. He was remitting a certain sum on a monthly basis. So, when the said Mr. Ogbonna defaulted in his obligation that he should be remitting a certain sum here monthly to me, sometime last year, he was consequently disengaged. Now, the fallout of his disengagement is what we are experiencing now.
“After he was offloaded, creditors started coming. One of whom is Mr. Nicholas. Mr. Nicholas is into the dealership of diesel. He sold a certain quantity of diesel to Mr. Ogbonna, the previous manager, worth about N3m. Then Mr. Ogbonna did not pay him and Mr. Ogbonna was eventually disengaged. Upon his disengagement, Nicholas appeared and said the hotel owed him. We told him that the management had changed, that he should go to Mr. Ogbonna to recover whatever he owed him.
“We showed him the agreement paper between me and the said Ogbonna, showing that Mr. Ogbonna was solely in charge of what happened here during that period. He was not comfortable with that. He petitioned this establishment at Area E Police Station. At Area E, I was invited. I turned in and made my representation to the fact that I had no hand in the transaction that led to the complaint. At the end of the day, they made me sign an undertaking to look for Mr. Ogbonna. I mobilized the police to track Mr. Ogbonna. He was arrested and produced to the police, the main complainant, Mr. Nicholas, was asked to come. The person you are actually looking for is here. He failed to turn up.
“At the end of the investigation, the police, in their wisdom, discharged this man and charged Mr. Ogbonna to court for, among other crimes, the diesel he supplied to Mr. Nicholas. He was arraigned in court at Apapa. After his arraignment, the prosecutor invited Mr. Nicholas to court as a principal party and complainant in the matter but he refused to show up.
“Then, after six months, this incident that has all the tenets of a war, an armed invasion, in the early hours of an innocent Sunday morning. Men of the Nigerian Civil Defense Corps invaded here. About 15 of them, masked, fully masked, welding dangerous AK-47 rifles. Then about 15 others, hoodlums, unmasked. They all invaded here. Initially, they pretended to be officers and men from the Area E Command, which made the security men allow them gain free access. They commanded everybody to lie face-down, demanded that they take them to where the principal owner was. They told them that the owner did not sleep within the establishment. They now asked them where this so-called generator was. It was that Mr. Nicholas, from the CCTV camera, that took them to where the generator was.
“They used their machine to lift the generator with its contents into their waiting truck and drove off. While all this happened, under the control and directions of the said Mr. Nicholas, they were shooting sporadically, customers fled, staff scattered. Many customers disappeared without paying their bills. Some lost their phones, some were injured. It was a typical armed attack. Before the men of Ago Police Station could come, the attackers had fled. The Ago people later came, made preliminary investigations. Fortunately, the CCTV camera identified Mr. Nicholas and some of his associates. Then we were able to trace his place in Festac. Eventually, he was arrested, brought to the police and he disclosed where he kept the generator.
“He also disclosed the identities of the men of the Civil Defense. Eventually, the men of Ago Police Station recovered the generator. One officer from the Civil Defense intervened and on noticing that his boys had committed a very serious offense, he started begging and suing for negotiation,
promising that he would bring the civil defense officers that masterminded the attack the next day at Ago Police Station. Unfortunately, when we arrived this morning to know the state of the investigation, the principal suspect, being Nicholas, had been released as of yesterday with the promise that he would return today. The men of the Civil Defense that he promised us would come here, that are suing for peace, did not turn up”.
The hotel’s CEO lamented that he could not quantify the loss recorded during that invasion: “They dismantled the generator and damaged so many things. Most customers are complaining. Some of them lost their money. The sales of that day, we couldn’t account for it. They wrecked the business for a whole week; the business did not go on because the generator that supplies power to the establishment was taken away.”
When contacted on phone, the public relations officer of NSCDC in Lagos, Seun Abolurin, told our reporter: “If such a thing happened last Sunday, up till now, we don’t have a report of such in our state headquarters. When people wear uniforms of organizations, it does not mean they are from that particular organization. You should know that people impersonate agencies very well. They should have reported the case to Civil Defense in Lagos. It will save him the stress of identification. If they reported the matter to the police, they should write us.”
When contacted, the Lagos State Police Command’s spokesman, Benjamin Hundeyin, said he would get in touch with the station and find out what really happened. However, a source at Ago Palace Police Station, in charge of the area where the incident took place, who insisted on anonymity told our reporter that the incident was reported at their station but they were yet to ascertain whether the people that perpetrated the act were really men from NSCDC.