Family Raises Alarm Over Whereabouts Of 19-year-old Student Handed Over To DSS By Vigilantes In Anambra

A Nigerian family has raised alarm after their son, Chukwuka Samuel failed to return him after reportedly being taken into custody by DSS.

The whereabouts of Chukwuka Samuel, a 19-year-old student of the Institute of Chinese, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, has become a source of worry after he was handed over by vigilantes to officials of the Department of State Services led by one Kevin Ugo.

SaharaReporters reports that Samuel left his parents’ residence in Nnewi, Anambra State for school on August 17, 2022.

According to his sister who spoke to SaharaReporters, he was arrested by the Nnewi central vigilante group, which handed him and others over to DSS officials led by Ugo.

However, five months after, the family has no information about Samuel as the secret police claimed he is not in its custody.

She added that all efforts to find his brother during numerous visits to the DSS headquarters in Anambra had been unsuccessful.

She said, “Samuel left home for school on 17th of August because he has exams. So he travelled, we tried contacting him but we couldn’t reach him. We received an anonymous call that he was in the custody of a vigilante group in Nnewi. On getting to the vigilante office, we were told he has been handed over to the DSS through an officer identified as Kelvin Ugo on the 18th of August.

“However, all efforts to find Samuel for the past 5 months have been futile as the DSS station claims to not have any record of him. We as a family have done everything within our power to find him to no avail.”

On why her brother was arrested by the vigilantes, she said, “They (vigilante group) told us that he was being mobbed, he and a group of people came to kill someone and that the other people ran away, and they received a call that somebody was being mobbed. So, they came to rescue him and later handed him over to DSS officials.

“They gave us the contact of the DSS official he was handed over to, I’m talking about Kelvin Ugo. We contacted him, he said he is in Abuja currently but all the people handed over to him by the vigilante group were taken to their command headquarters, so we went there but they told us they don’t have any record of him.”