Norah Okafor, a Nigerian has narrated how some officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) broke her gate, doors and barged into her house at 2am in Abia.
She accused the operatives of storming her house in a “commando-like manner.”
The Nigerian journalist in a Facebook post earlier said, “At exactly 1:36am, I was alerted by my brother that there are armed robbers at my gate trying to make their way into the compound. Because it was an electric fence, I didn’t bother enough because I felt they can’t make their way in. Alas, I was wrong. 2am on the dot, they made their way into the compound.
“They came prepared. Over 25 of them with two hilux buses, masked and dressed in black upon black. A huge one climbed the fence, with a plier and immediately cut off a few of the wires, jumped into the compound and with an axe, broke the gate key open and zoom, they made their first entry into my apartment. As a nude sleeper, while they tried to make their way into the compound, I found something to wear while my brothers and I were thinking of a way of escape. The worst case scenario for me is that they will rape or take the only valuable available (a car key) so I prepared my mind.
“The next thing I realised was that about 7 of them were already in my room with shouts of ‘lie down, face down, on the light, where’s your phone, where’s your car key’, where’s this and that..confused me. Seeing over 25 hefty men with different kinds of guns, ‘mhen, e don be, be that’. I handed the phone to them with the key, before then, they had already taken hold of my laptop. I turned to be sure these were armed robbers, and they asked for my passwords to all the devices collected with masking tape to identify each. Still in shock, I heard someone destroying everything in the kitchen, my room, that of my brothers and all the drawers. I was still asking myself what’s happening? They asked me to stand and follow them downstairs, lo and beyond, they unmasked themselves, hmmmm..are these kind criminals? I asked. All my neighbours were already going through the same pain as me.
They had already given my brothers a beating of their lives, carried my neighbour downstairs and tried unlocking all the cars in the compound. And after searching all the phones and laptops, three of their men walked in, lo and behold, it was EFCC. What? I screamed.
“Shut up, was the next thing I heard and when they couldn’t open my phone, they asked me to, I did and after a while I just asked, please, where is your office so I can come pick up my things on my way to work. They asked me what I do and I said ‘journalist’, (they) asked my neighbour he said ‘lawyer’, the other ‘doctor’. They looked at me, handed over the phones and said, ‘We just wasted our time’.
“These fools spent over one hour molesting and destroying things in this compound. I feel so pained and embarrassed right now. Is this how EFCC operate? How did we get here? Who is the informant? I am just confused right now. Thank God my mum isn’t here.”
When contacted by SaharaReporters, Wilson Uwujaren, spokesman for the commission, claimed he was not aware of the raid.
“You said Abia right, that should be under Port Harcourt Zone, let me call them,” he told SaharaReporters.
When asked about the recent commando-like manner EFCC operatives have been operating, he said, “You are forming an opinion already, that’s not a question, send your question as a text to me.”
The anti-graft agency has been under fire recently for raiding hotels and private apartments in commando-like manner.
