The Ebonyi State APC gubernatorial hopeful, Senator Sonni Ogbuoji has sent his sympathy message to the Catholic Bishop of the Abakaliki Diocese, Bishop Mike Nnachi Okoro and the Ebonyi Catholic community over the crude brutality and criminal assault on a Catholic priest, Rev, Father Matthew Orie.
Rev. Fr. Orie is the Principal of Girls’ Technical College Agba in Ishielu Local Government Area of the state.
The cleric was beaten up to a point of coma on Monday by a thug of the state government drafted as revenue enforcer and collector that deploy brutish means and without respect for the law. Human rights or personalities have been unleashing torment on the people of the state.
The shoddy and shameful ways climaxed Monday evening at the Rice Mill, Abakaliki when the revenue enforcer who knows no rules or was educated on the rights of citizens of this country descended on the priest and without regard for his status as a spiritual leader of repute rained blows on him till a point he relapsed into coma and was taken to the hospital unconscious.
Ogbuoji in his letter of sympathy and empathy expressed his regrets over the incident and a situation in the state where apart from outrageous taxation and suffocating revenue drive that brooks no regards for the law, citizens have become experimental objects in the hands of the government’s officials for brutality.
‘I recall that last week Thursday, my campaign billboard on Water Works Road was brutally taken down and an agent of the state boasted that he was the one that did it and that nothing will happen. All persuasions from my campaign office that more civilized options existed rather than vandalism as law enforcement tool received no remorse by the callous groups that act more like thugs than government officials whose actions should be within the ambit of the law.’
‘I have on record complaints before the police that officials or better put, thugs of the government, have been junketing all over the city removing campaign posters of the opposition and some of our party members brutalized the same way as the priest.
‘It is lamentable that if dignified citizens as the priest can’t enjoy his rights from torture, that signifies that we have actually descended into a terrible state of anarchy in Ebonyi under the present government,
‘I therefore urge Ebonyians to rise to the occasion and extricate themselves from this reign of impunity and usher in a new order and government that would respect and uphold their rights. So worrisome is the fact that state police head office admitted that this crime was committed.
‘I therefore urge the state Commissioner of Police to ensure that the perpetrator of this brutality is arrested and adequately punished in line with the law to serve as deterrent to hundreds of other brutes working at the behest of the state government for a safer Ebonyi.’
News report said; ‘is now at the accident and emergency unit of the Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki (FETHA) battling for his life.
N500 bribe money was allegedly demanded by the crude revenue agent at the gate of the rice mill.
Fr. Orie had gone to the mill to buy rice for students of his school and reportedly paid all necessary revenues that will qualify him to evacuate the rice out of the mill.
But the agent, whose identity is yet to be ascertained, accosted him and demanded that he must be settled before transporting the bags of rice out of the industry.
The priest had wanted to pay the sum of N500 the agent demanded from him when other revenue collectors told him that he has cleared all the revenues.
“Having been told that he has cleared every fees, Fr. Orie decided to carry his goods out of the gate and refused to pay N500 the government agent/tout asked him to pay. It was at this point that the tout descended on him and beat him to pulp.’