Posted by Samuel on Fri 17th Sep, 2021 - tori.ng
They were said to have surrounded the guest including Chinese who lodged in the hotel, lied them down on gunpoint and beat them with gumboots.
According to The PUNCH, there is palpable tension in Enugu State metropolis on Friday morning following the reported attack on South-East leaders of the National Youth Council of Nigeria, National Association of Nigerian Students and others by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday night.
The PUNCH gathered that the operatives of the anti-graft agency stormed the meeting venue of the youth leadership at the Castle Majestic Hotel Oba street, near Ogui Police Station, manhandled some of them arrested over 20 of them.
Sources told our correspondent that the operatives came with more than five buses.
They were said to have surrounded the guest including Chinese who lodged in the hotel, lied them down on gunpoint and beat them with gumboots.
The Chief Executive Officer of the hotel, Friday Ede, confirmed the attack.
Also, a Twitter, Ike Oraifite, posted videos of the assault online around midnight.
He captioned the video, “Happening now, whilst having a meeting alongside several youth leaders the men of @officialEFCC are barging into rooms with the cooperation of the hotel management, they carted away over 40 persons drinking by the poolside without proper investigation.
“Several gunshots were fired in (the) guise of dispersing the crowd and one of the masked men(EFCC) asked me to stop videoing, threatening to seize my phone which I laughed off. I must say that their modus operandi can be likened to that of armed robbers and that I call shameful,” he alleged.
He threatened that by Friday morning, the youths would march to the EFCC office in Enugu “to clear this mess”.
Efforts to reach a spokesperson for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, proved abortive as of the time of filing this report.
This is not the first time the anti-graft agency would be accused of random highhandedness or breaking into people’s homes and hotel rooms in the dead of the night, without showing a warrant.
On August 23, 2021 armed anti-graft operatives invaded the Lekki residence of Big Brother Naija Lockdown housemate, Dorathy Bachor, at midnight, saying it was chasing some suspected fraudsters.
On July 13, 2021, EFCC operatives broke into Parktonian Hotel in the Lekki area of Lagos. During the raid, the operatives were alleged to have gained entry into the occupants’ rooms by seizing the master cards from the management of the hotel at gunpoint.