VIDEO: Police officers filmed flogging Aba resident with machete

Police officers in Aba, Abia State, have been caught on camera using a machete to flog a resident.

A video posted on Twitter, on Tuesday, by Harrison (@harrisonmbamara), showed four police officers forcing a man and a woman to do ‘frog jumps’ in the middle of a quiet road.

The man was later asked to lie down on the tarred road, while an officer used a machete to flog him repeatedly.

The officers could be heard, from the clip, shouting at their victims who appeared helpless.

It is unclear why the two were being punished.

But from the voices from the background, from the people who were doing the secret recording, it appeared the assault was linked to the Tuesday attack on a police station in the city.

Attack

Unknown gunmen, in the early hours of Tuesday, attacked the station, killed two police officers, and carted away arms and ammunition.

This is the second time in less than a month police stations in Abia State have been attacked.

“Something happened last night. A police station was burnt,” one of the voices in the background could be heard saying.

“There was an attack on a police station early in the morning, the police now start(ed) to arrest and maltreat innocent citizens as if they are the ones that carried (out) the attack,” the Twitter user, who posted the video later said of the clip, in the comment section of the microblogging site.

He called on the police authority to call the officers to order and requested the Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, to intervene.

PREMIUM TIMES could not immediately get the police reaction on the incident as the police spokesperson in the state, Geoffrey Ogbonna, did not respond to calls and a text message from our reporter.

However, a response tweet from the Complaint Response Unit of the Nigerian police asked the Twitter user to give them the victims’ contact and the location where the assault took place.

“This is not the true reflection of the NPF (Nigerian Police Force),” the tweet added.

Abia State Government’s reaction

Meanwhile, the Abia State Government, through its Commissioner for Information, John Kalu, has also reacted to the video.

“While we sympathise with the Police over the cowardly attack by yet to be identified hoodlums, we will not tolerate acts of brutality against innocent Abians and residents.

“The state government will investigate the authenticity of the video with a view to punishing whoever is found to have unleashed brutality on innocent citizens.

“We call on the police not to succumb to the temptation to engage in knee jerk response but to painstakingly identify the culprits and bring them to justice,” Mr Kalu told PREMIUM TIMES, Tuesday.

Nigeria’s human rights record has continued to deteriorate, despite more than two decades of democratic rule.

Citizens, frequently brutalised by security officers, hardly get justice because of Nigeria’s poor criminal justice system.