AJAERO RECOUNTS ORDEAL IN POLICE CUSTODY
BY JENNIFER NWOSU
The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, says he was wonderfully created by God amid his arrest and brutalization by men of the Police force. He currently battles to keep his right eye.
Ajaero was arrested in Owerri, the capital of Imo State earlier on Wednesday during a protest by workers in Imo State over an alleged “serial and habitual abuse and violation” of their rights by the state government.
He was picked up from the NLC State Council Secretariat by heavily armed policemen in Owerri, taken to an unknown destination and brutally manhandled from where he was taken to the Federal Medical Center Owerri for treatment.
In a joint statement by the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) shortly after Ajaero’s arrest, the Labour unions accused the Governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodimma and the Imo State Commissioner of Police of abducting the NLC leader.
Speaking shortly after his release from custody, Ajaero said he had also been threatened to be dragged before the courts by the Police.
According to Ajaero: “If you say interim order, it elapses with time; if the court issues another one, then it’s a different thing. I told them interim order ends within one week or two; they now kept the letter and told me they can prosecute me.
“I told them it’s the same court that can institute a contempt charge; you just can’t start prosecuting me.
“They beat me; God must have taken extra time to create me because of the kind of beating I received.”
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