A few hours ago, a news story that famed Nigerian actor, Kalu Ikeagwu, that he has been arrested by men of the Nigerian police force in connection with a Theft and Murder case. In keeping to our tradition of bringing you accurate reportage, the editorial team of Sahara weekly got the actor to its cooperate head office where he recounted the horror he and his family went through in the hands of the Nigerian police force.
The soft spoken actor began… “Yesterday, 26th of September 2016, at about 3:40pm my daughter had just been dropped off at home by her official school bus while I opened the gate for her to come into the house, two men accosted and ordered that I should follow them, then I asked them who they are, instead they flashed an Identity card that I only showed police written on it without any name. Meanwhile, these two men were in plain clothes and one of them had a black looped earring . At this point, I said I was not going to follow them since I do not know who they are. Suddenly a white unmarked bus pulled –up in front me and four more men on plain clothes appeared from the bus with one pointing an AK47 raffle at my fore head …” Sensing danger, the actor smartly dialled his wife’s phone number but the men began struggling his phone from him, before they took the phone from him he was able to tell his wife that “ some men purported to be police officers are taking me away…”
The men over powered and handcuffed him while they drove to Pen-cinema Police station Agege, Lagos State. They drove passed area G Police Station Ogba which is closer to Kalu’s residence. Arriving at Pen-cinema Police station, they held him outside the gate; until a man appeared wearing a black long coat who simply identified himself as Born Great Benin. “I said to him I cannot answer any question from you, unless I am taken into the police station proper, it was this Born Great Benin that later ordered them to take off the cuffs and asked them to bundled me into the bus again and they drove off to somewhere I later identified as area F, police station Ikeja. At this area F rather than take me into the station’s main building, I was held at a room when a certain gentle man identified as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Philips came in and showed me a telephone number and asked if I knew the owner of the number…”
Instantly, Ikeagwu identified the owner of the number as his friend who had picked him up from the airport a few days earlier. Ikeagwu inquired from his friend if he had bought a phone recently and his friend said yes and narrated how he had swapped his old phone(ipone6) for a new one(Iphone7) at the popular computer village Ikeja, Lagos Nigeria and paid an extra N37.000 in a legal business transaction with a phone dealer. “That was when they explained to me that since I was the last person that dialled my friend’s phone number it made me a soft target-hence my arrest ”.
Ikeagwu’s friend who had travelled has since returned to Lagos, at the time of publishing this story Kalu Ikeagwu is a free man while his friend in company of a lawyer are working with the Nigerian Police Force to identify the phone dealer.
Asked what this experience has done to his family and his personal feelings towards the Nigerian Police, the graduate of English Language had this to say “first I will talk about my wife, she is still in fear even till this moment she even stopped me from jugging this morning . I thank God at the way she handled the situation, the situation has made me remember I have a gift in her. For me, it only reminded me of what a movie director in Enugu told me, he said, he can forgive a man that takes away his wife, or a man that stabs him so long as he did not die, but can never lift a finger to help a dying police man. In my life I have never had dealings with the police but it’s unfortunate the way this episode ended. Because their actions are an embarrassment to Nigeria’s image, the first skill of every intelligent police officer is his understanding of psychology but instead they chose to do otherwise”.
From the press perspective; Kalu is disappointed at two media houses (not Sahara Weekly) and wishes to thank them for not having recourse to hear from him before publishing their stories on this issue. “But when I wedded they had the time to call me and report it, but when this issue came up they forgot to call me, later remembered to call me after they had publish their stories with my private home address knowing how susceptible my family will be to miscreants and exposing me to the public unnecessarily” he concluded.