Police officers in Aba, Abia State, have been caught on camera using a machete to flog a resident.
A video posted on Twitter, on Tuesday, by Harrison (@harrisonmbamara), showed four police officers forcing two people; one male, one female, to do ‘squat jumps’ in the middle of a quiet road.
The man was later asked to lie flat on the tarred road, with an officer then proceeding to beat him repeatedly with a machete.
The officers could be heard, from the clip, shouting at the hapless residents.
It is unclear why the two were being punished. However, judging from the background voices in the recorded video, it appeared the assault was linked to an earlier attack on a police station in the city.
This is the second time in less than a month that police stations in Abia State have been attacked.
“Something happened last night. A police station was burnt,” one of the voices in the background could be heard saying.
“There was an attack on a police station early in the morning, the police now start(ed) to arrest and maltreat innocent citizens as if they are the ones that carried (out) the attack,” the Twitter user, who posted the video later said of the clip, in the comment section of the microblogging site.
He called on the police authority to call the officers to order and requested the Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, to intervene.
A response tweet from the Complaint Response Unit of the Nigerian police asked the Twitter user to give them the victims’ contact and the location where the assault took place.
“This is not the true reflection of the NPF (Nigerian Police Force),” the tweet added.
Meanwhile, the Abia State Government, through its Commissioner for Information, John Kalu, has also reacted to the video.
“While we sympathise with the Police over the cowardly attack by yet to be identified hoodlums, we will not tolerate acts of brutality against innocent Abians and residents.
“The state government will investigate the authenticity of the video with a view to punishing whoever is found to have unleashed brutality on innocent citizens.
“We call on the police not to succumb to the temptation to engage in knee-jerk response but to painstakingly identify the culprits and bring them to justice,” Mr. Kalu told reporters on Tuesday.
