Inside How Sen. Urhoghide Was Dragged To Court Over ‘Street-thug Cruelty’ Meted On Activist, Arabome

By Anta Amatoe, International Reporter for Global Media Radar for Endangered Citizens (GloMREC), Africa Region, with Associate Reporters Frances Ighodaro, Dorcas Adebowale, Amber Momodu

Investigative details have emerged on how the senator representing Edo South senatorial district in Edo state, South-South of southern Nigeria, Pharmacist Matthew Aisagbonriodion Uroghide, was hauled to a high court in Nigeria for what civil society in Nigeria and the Bar in the senator’s home state alleged and described as shocking violation of Nigeria’s clearly spelt eviction laws and procedures.

Global Media investigative journalist, Anta Amatoe was in Nigeria June last year en route Benin City, the Edo state capital, to cover environmental pollution tensions by a coalition of Niger Delta communities in the region planning a showdown with Dutch oil multi-national, SPDC Shell, when local media colleagues first broke the news. Amatoe followed the journalists to an incredibly hideous crime scene at a tenement property called Mercy Estate, a mini-estate located on Uwagboe Street at the Etete fringe of the capital’s Government Reservation Area.

Unsenatorial “Thuggery”

Ugly, jaw-dropping violence at the scene that day, which have now evolved full circle into a law suit against the Nigerian senator, shocked to the marrows numerous eyewitnesses who included street neighbours, photographing journalists and lawyers. The journalists and lawyers had been called to the scene at the early stage of the incident by the victim, Engr. Ken Arabome, a long-term tenant who was then also the caretaker of the property and victim of extra-judicial eviction by brutish thugs alleged to have been mobilized for mayhem by Edo state senator, Matthew Urhoghide.

The tenant, Arabome, had been occupying the three-room apartment since 2015 before the owners of the mini-estate put it in the market for sale in 2016, and thereafter formally made him the caretaker of the property pending when a buyer and new owner took possession. Investigation revealed that Sen. Urhoghide, who will be 66 years this August, and his younger brother, Engr. Joseph Urhoghide, had sometime in 2019 approached the caretaker, Ken Arabome, with a gentleman’s agreement to pay the caretaker “not less than N1million commission” upon his successful facilitation to contact and purchase the property from its Lagos based owner ahead of several other bidders.

Investigations revealed, however, that after Sen. Urhoghide successfully purchased and secured ownership transfer of the property, he was said to have terminally reneged on the commission agreement of “not less than N1million naira.” Instead of the gentleman agreement for an agency commission to Arabome, he decided to go the thuggish route common with unethical Nigerian politicians and bullish land speculators.

Dependable sources disclosed that, the senator reluctantly paid Arabome the sum of N100,000 through his younger brother after protracted hostility and zipped shut his purse. He was said to have then engaged mayhem to eject the caretaker out of the property in order to put inaccessible distance between him and the caretaker and to intimidate him out of asking for the commission balance of N900,000.

On the day of the ejection, June 29, 2020, reporters arrived the scene on time at the human right activist’s SOS and helplessly watched as the senator’s younger brother, reportedly led violent, fiercely unapproachable brute thugs to the scene and ruthlessly marshaled the senator’s ejection mayhem order on Mr. Arabome. Reporters watched as one of the thugs pounced on and pummeled the tenant with blows till the thug successfully seized the victim’s Android phone, apparently in order to restrain the hapless tenant from making further callouts for help.

The assailants, armed with iron rods, told Arabome that Sen. Urhoghide, the new owner of the property had instructed them to remove him and his possessions out of the property with immediate effect. They broached no dialogue, broke the doors of the apartment, physically beat up and overpowered the protesting tenant. In the sight of a large crowd of stunned onlookers, phone recording journalists and lawyers, the thugs and his brother hauled Mr. Arabome’s larger possessions out of the apartment into a bus van and moved out smaller sundry by wheelbarrow shuttles. In a blitz of vandal violence they conveyed and flung the tenant’s properties in a chaotic heap outside the estate gate under a soaking drizzle of rain.

Several efforts to reach Sen. Urhoghide and his younger brother to take their side of the story were staunchly turned down and unsuccessful.

A renowned ex-student unionist, civil rights crusader of international clout and easy-going peaceable neighbor, Ken Arabome was unanimously described by on-the-scene witnesses who spoke to this reporter that day as an “unfortunate victim” who did not deserve the traumatizing treatment he suffered in the hands of the Edo senator and his thugs. That he was another of many casualties of Nigeria’s repressive capitalist and decadent power drunk syndrome where big fish politicians regularly defy the rule of law and swallow small fish citizens with flagrant impunity in everyday life in Africa’s largest country.

Self-help Eviction

Investigations confirmed that the senator and his younger brother had carried out the barbaric eviction actions without a shred of quit notice prior to the incident. Speaking with horror and disbelief at the scene, eyewitnesses unanimously stated that Sen. Matthew Urhoghide, a lawmaker of the Green Upper Chamber of Nigeria’s bi-cameral legislature, who was widely believed to be a gentle, outwardly amiable politician, acted with incredible street-thug cruelty and impunity. A sympathetic shopkeeper from a few blocks away who came through the rain to the scene did not mince his words.

“This is monstrous wickedness,” he said with unconcealed disgust. “It is an unbelievable eyesore and demonstrates that there is truly no act to find the mind’s construction on the face. We thought Sen. Urhoghide was different. We thought something like this was beneath him, but now we know better. He is not different from the pack. I voted for him in the last senatorial elections but now and I am so disappointed in him and regret it. It shows just how far you can trust these politicians once they get into power.”

In a follow-up call from Dakar, Senegal, in September three months after the incident, one lawyer who was at the scene also described the senator’s actions thus. “Urhoghide’s actions are grimly shocking,” he said. “It was abuse of power, inhumane and despicable unparliamentary assaults against his own constituent whose right of tenancy in the property solidly subsisted at the time of the incident and even till this date.”

The above portrait of Sen. Urhoghide may seem hard to digest until one checks out the history of the property and the hitherto affectionate relationship between the senator and Mr. Ken Arabome before the extra-judicial eviction of the latter. Arabome had told journalists at the time: “When the senator was desperately seeking to undercut competitors to buy the property and I was the property’s tenant-caretaker, he was like a harmless dove. A friendly perfect gentlemen who came to my humble three-room apartment several times in company of his wife, Mrs. Urhoghide.”

Arabome explained further, “They courted my commission service with affectionate civility and promises. While leaving my three-room apartment during one of their several visits, the wife returned from their car and gave me N10,000 as a goodwill tip. It was an incentive for me not to relent in my commission agency mediation between them and my then landlord and to diligently secure my landlord’s preference for the senator against other hotly bidding buyers, one of whom was already on the verge of paying up for the property. Once Sen. Urhoghide had the property deal sealed and its ownership transfer deed in his bag, he transfigured dramatically into a monstrous apparition. It turned out that his previously smiling teeth were actually swords of a wolf and apartheid cruelty. He proved to me that he would do anything to dispossess me of my small agency commission and will not think twice to do away with my life if I got in his way. Putting everything now in proper survey, I can tell you now that my life is in danger.”

Arabome illustrated his point by revealing that soon after he followed up his brutalization by the senator’s thugs and unlawful ejection by filing police report and petition against the senator and his younger brother, he began to receive deadly threats on his telephone lines from concealed GSM lines. He holds the senator responsible as the author and sponsor of these threats. From our investigations, you can hardly fault him from the actions of the senator as the matter entered the police phase and the senator further barred his fangs.

Police to the Scene

On the day of his vicious eviction, sympathizing neighbours had advised Mr. Ken Arabome to file a report at the nearest police precinct, which was the Etete Police Division, located less than a kilometer from the property. The division’s DPO, Superintendent Adesuwa Omoruyi (Mrs.), reputed to be a straight, efficient cop promptly assigned a team led by a lady IPO, one Inspector (Mrs.) Kemi, who accompanied the complainant to the distressful scene. The police met and witnessed the senator’s said thugs on the dastardly job of throwing the last remnants of the complainant’s possessions outside the compound gate without a court judgment. They invited the senator’s brother at the scene, Engr. Joseph Urhoghide, to the precinct on behalf of the senator.

At the station desk, the younger Urhoghide put a call through to the senator on speaker. From the other end Sen. Matthew Urhoghide roared to the hearing of the police and everyone present that Joseph and his bullies should deal with Mr. Arabome “thoroughly,” in Nigeria English another synonym for “ruthlessly.”

Investigations further revealed that when the diligent Etete police station completed investigations and were satisfied that the senator had committed grievous violations of the country’s laws and were set to arrest Joseph Urhoghide and charge him and his thugs to court with the senator, a call came from the state police headquarters. It was the Commissioner of Police, CP Kokumo. The CP halted the court process, ostensibly for more superior investigative work to be done or a peace arbitration.

As common in Nigeria, big-wig culprits of sundry crimes corrupt and compromise superior ranking officers who then brazenly ambush crime investigations, obstruct court processes, frustrate and abort justice. It is literally an everyday jurisprudence trauma the poor and powerless in Nigeria contend with. As it turned out, events came to prove beyond doubt that in virtually all respects this was precisely the case.

The Commissioner of Police of Edo state at that time was CP Johnson Babatunde Kokumo. Evidently at the instigation of the senator, Police Commissioner Kokumo sent signal from state police headquarters on July 2, 2020 for the file of the investigation by Etete Division, the investigating police officers and the parties in the matter. The CP listened to the parties and admitted before all that the complainant, Mr. Arabome, had been wronged by the Urhoghides and their allegedly mobilized thugs. He pledged to mediate and resolve the matter within a few days. But alas it was only a lullaby to send the complainant to sleep and abandon the prosecution.

Deploying a frustrating freeze and frazzle technique popular in Nigeria’s eminently corrupt and oppressive police-prosecution processes, the complainant Arabome waited in vain for weeks, which turned to endless months without a further word from the Commissioner of Police. His several dutiful visits to the CP’s office with reminders drew blank. Silence couldn’t be louder. The set-up by police hierarchy conspiracy and attrition to frustrate the victim couldn’t be clearer.

Finally, on January 18, 2021, the Police Commissioner Johnson Kokumo was – wait for it – promoted to Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Operations in Nigeria’s Police Force Headquarters in the country’s capital, Abuja, and moved out of Edo state to resume at his new duty post a stone throw to the Presidency. That is how it works in Nigeria for the high and mighty. For the “small fish” like Ken Arabome, however, it is fly or fry; shut up or perish. As a human right activist who never buckles under oppression, Arabome chose none. Next stop?

Court!

At the time of filing this report from our Canada GloMREC office, affirmative information from correspondent contacts in Edo state, Nigeria, indicate that the aggrieved party, Mr. Ken Arabome through his attorneys had proceeded to file an iron-cast case of both criminal and civil effects against Sen. Matthew Urhoghide and his reported platoon of thugs headed by his younger brother, Joseph Urhoghide.

For investigations and verification of this GloMREC report by any member of Nigeria’s National Assembly where Senator Matthew Urhoghide serves as the current senator representing Edo South senatorial district at the Green Chamber, the diplomatic and international community, local and international human rights groups, and general members of the public, visit Mercy Estate at Uwagboe street, a short walk from Sen. Matthew Urhoghide’s own palatial mansion at Etete Road, GRA, Benin City. Up to the hour of going to press with this report, you will find the present state of the remnants of Ken Arabome’s weather beaten properties seven months after on the street where Sen. Matthew Urhoghide’s thugs threw them outside the estate he bought through Arabome, after “aboki” pushcart scavengers had picked them clean of valuables like savanna vultures. Please, go take a look before the senator takes them away because of this report.

From email copies shared by Nigeria media colleagues to the international community, the case was filed by the reputable law firm of Paul Osarenkhoe at the high court of Edo state, Benin judicial division, and bears Suit No. 13/70/2021. It was yet to be assigned to a judge at press time. When our reporters contacted the head of Osarenkhoe law firm, he firmly declined comments on the suit on grounds that since his chamber was proceeding for legal redress, it would be sub judice and prejudicial to make any pre-jurisprudent comments on the matter.

As it was when I was in Nigeria and the senator turned down media calls on the eviction fracas, efforts by our Nigeria correspondents to speak with him or his brother Joseph on their side of the ensuing litigations were stolidly rebuffed. In the meantime, the litigant Mr. Ken Arabome, according to him, began to receive fresh anonymous phone calls after he made public in January his intention to file litigations against the Edo state senator. We shall be following the court proceedings in the future and developments affecting the endangered human right activist, Ken Arabome.

The new GloMREC reports are shared through Reuter Afis in more than seven languages and filed with the Department of State equivalents of over 43 countries across five continents, international human rights and social-economic development agencies.