Inspector-General of Police Ibrahim Idris
Segun Atanda/
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has redeployed a corps member, Mr. Michael Uwakwe, from Zamfara to Anambra, following alleged assault by a police officer.
According to NAN, the NYSC Director, Corps Welfare and Inspectorate, Mrs. Victoria Okakwu, stated this in Abuja, today.
Okakwu said the corps member was redeployed to ensure his safety during the national assignment.
The briefing was designed to keep the public abreast on the outcome of investigations conducted by the NYSC on the matter.
Uwakwe was reportedly battered by the policeman for punishing a student who is a rich man’s ward.
Okakwu said after proper investigations and resolution of the matter, NYSC had also ordered the immediate withdrawal of 11 other corps members who were posted alongside Uwakwe to Nasara Standard Academy, Gusau.
She said the 11 corps members had been re-posted to serve in other establishments in Gusau as a proactive measure to ensure their safety and security.
This is how the other Corps members broke the news yesterday:
“The entire corps members serving in Kaura Namoda, Zamfara State are bleeding out purple blood. Our hearts are thumping out: strong rhythms of pain. Our dignity has been trampled and mangled with reckless impunity. God!
“Today a corps member, Michael, serving his fatherland through sweat and bile; rough roads, hunger, merciless weather; and the shame of 19800 in the face of a smothering economy. Michael—serving in Nasara Standard Academy perceived as the shining light in a tottering secondary education system in Kaura Namoda— was today brutalised, manhandled and reduced to nothingness by a brainless team comprising of the richest man in Kaura Namoda and his equally wanton boys. What was his crime?
“Michael had punished his student who happens to be this man’s ward. A simple kneel down. Michael who had nurtured these block heads with patience and love. Michael, who had taught with empty stomach till letters on the chalkboard danced like rampant music notes before his eyes. For all of us like Michael, who have stretched the capacities of our strengths and sensibilities to serve a stifling system. For all the ‘ under the sun and in the rain’, what have we gotten as reward?
“This notorious man, clenching his cash ridden fists, recruits the help of the police and in that shameless trotting of Zombies, storms Nasara Academy to crucify Michael like a criminal. He was punched like a sack of millet and stripped of humanity. He was beaten, beaten, and again beaten like he stole karats of gold in a jungle market. O God! My fingers are itching, and it’s like they will drip blood. Michael was driven to the Police Station where the real torture awaited him.
“They removed what was left of his pride as a Man serving his country. Then, they flogged and flogged him, and when their energy sapped out, the Evil of a man threw wads of naira notes about, and refueled their animalism. Michael was a heap of sorrow and a container of hot painful tears. As some of Michael’s colleagues arrived and tried to raise their voices against the escalating reign of heartlessness; the Police men, some apparently drunk, threatened with pointed rifles, slapping and pushing them….
“Hear me if you are a corps member in Kaura Namoda! We have been abused to our bones. We are now just remnants of pride sliced into irredeemable pieces. Our hearts have been pierced by hot pellets of searing pain. Our heads are now buried in shame. The little essence of our ghostly existence has been thoroughly erased. We are now empty, just plain empty.
“Who will hear this and not cry? How can we move about when our sinews are depleted? Who will walk the long and dusty paths to schools to teach? Who will serve the masters under a sun that burns through skin and fluid? Who will hear this and not cry?
“Nothing has been done. The engineer of this massive evil is an untouchable… He has played ping pong with our dignity and thinks he will get away with it because he is rich. Because our society is rotten and deceased of sense. Because our policeman are a bunch of kitted area boys. Because ‘money’ has shredded the spines of our moral make-up.
“Michael is lying in a police cell, writhing in raw pain—- a soul beaten beyond repair. He has been physically wounded but more serious is the mental injury. But he is not alone. We are all wounded like Michael and our soul is burning from strife. Who will hear this and not cry? We therefore call on:
The State Government;
The State Coordinator NYSC;
The Emir of Kaura Namoda;
The Commissioner of Police;
“Every Khaki and Jungle boot in Zamfara state and Nigeria as a whole. Let us roar and be heard. Tell the next person to tell another. Let our tales of woe reach the peak where justice crouches. The brutalisation of Michael in a land where he is vulnerable and hapless will not go without notice. Justice must be done. Corps members must be protected. Our dignity must be restored. The pride of khaki and Jungle boots must be reinvented.
“Today, Michael was battered for all of us. Shall we hear and look away…who will hear this AND NOT CRY?”
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This is quite unimaginable to see that a man or a community is bigger than the government. First and foremost, I am totally against students being beaten for any reason what's so ever, there are several ways punishment can be applied than resulting into beating, haven said that, the so called rich man and the police ordered to carry out such a dastardly act on a young man serving his fatherland, must never go unpunished.