INEC Staff Arrested With Gun, Live Ammunition In Abia   

A staff of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Abia state capital have been arrested for unlawful possession of a gun and live ammunition.

His arrest followed a petition written against him with which the police executed a search warrant in his house and discovered the arms.

The INEC official, simply identified as Emmanuel Agwu was arrested by detectives deployed by the Assistant Inspector General of Police in the zone Mr. Hosea Karma.

Agwu was said to have resisted the arrest, threatening to shoot the Policemen when they stormed his residence, a development which forced the police to beat a retreat and resurface with a search warrant.

ABNews report that Agwu who is a director in INEC serving at Akwa Ibom State, was ordered to be arrested at his Amauba Housing Estate, Ubakala Umuahia in connection with a case of alleged threat to life leveled against him in a petition written by C. M Onwukamuche, a legal practitioner based in Umuahia.

It was gathered that Agwu who is currently at loggerheads with one Chigozie Okeahialam over a six plot of land at Amauba Housing Estate, had refused all civil approach made to settle the matter, but rather he forcefully took possession of the land and threatened Okeahialam to stay away, hence the petition was brought against him.

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A Police source said when the arrest team arrived at Agwu’s house, he refused to open his gate and called the Policemen in uniform “kidnappers”.

The source said, “When we got to Agwu’s house he didn’t open the gate for us even though we were on Uniform and identified ourselves as policemen. He called us kidnapers and went on to contact the Police and other security agencies in the State that kidnappers were at his gate. One of his friends who is said to be a Military man came and confirmed that we were Police officers, but he refused to open his gate.

“We contacted our base and the AIG asked us to come back. We went back and obtained a search warrant and returned and carried out a search in his house. We found seven rams of live ammunition from his room. We then arrested him and asked him to produce the gun and he refused and said he had no gun, but we later recovered the gun”.

According to the petition made available to ABNews by Onwukamuche, he stated that his client Okeahialam had a business ideal with Agwu in which he sold part of his landed property to him, leaving other parts of the land for himself.

The petition added that Okeahialam also extended a power of attorney in respect of the part of the land sold to Agwu, but Agwu had refused to return a copy of the said power of attorney to him.

The petition read in part, “All efforts made for Agwu to return the power of attorney to our client has proved abortive, until on the 5th day of march, 2018 when our client visited the said landed property only to discover that Agwu has left the area sold to him and encroached into the other remaining part of our client’s land not sold to him.

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“Our client discovered that Agwu had also sold part of his land to strangers who had commenced building on it, while his wife and son had already commenced farming on the remaining part of the land.

“Efforts made by our client to challenge Agwu’s unlawful encroachment into his land was resisted by Agwu and his son who both reportedly pointed gun at him and threatened him to leave the land for them or he will lose his life’’.

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