The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) Umar Danladi has been caught on camera physically assaulting a security guard at Banex Plaza in Wuse, Abuja.
In a five-minute video that has gone viral online, Mr. Danlandi was seen slapping and kicking the security guard, while police officers suspected to be attached to him were trying to restrain him from attacking the guard further.
The crowd around the scene was heard shouting “Go away, oga go inside your car, respect yourself.”
A plastic bottle was seen thrown at his vehicle while the policemen were struggling to calm Mr. Danlandi.
The voice from the person recording the scene was heard saying: “You are not the most powerful person here, they will beat you here”.
The voice also said in the video clip that the mirror of Mr. Danladi’s black sport utility vehicle (SUV) was smashed.
The CCT chairman was eventually pulled back into his vehicle by the policemen who are likely to be his orderlies.
However, as the vehicle was leaving the premises, the gate was shut and it was trying to find its way out of the premises when the video ended.
According to PREMIUM TIMES, the head of CCT’s media relations, Ibraheem Al-Hassan said Mr. Danladi did not assault the guard, ”but was the one being assaulted during the altercation” that ensued over parking space on the premises of the shopping plaza, despite the visual evidence.
“The Chairman did not assault the guard. The crowd assaulted the chairman,” Al-Hassan said.
He also said the policemen seen in the video clip were not Mr. Danladi’s security details but “the policemen in the neighbourhood who came to rescue him”.
“The chairman only went to the plaza with his driver. And if not for the intervention of the policemen from the neighbourhood and also from Maitama Police Station, he could have been lynched,” he added.
Newsmen found out that the pandemonium started between Mr. Danladi and the guard over a parking space on the Banex premise.
Mr. Danladi was said to have arrived the premises at about noon on Monday for a phone repair, but on getting to the premises, his driver parked at an open parking lot, but the guard who sighted them from afar insisted that they could not park there while the CCT chairman insisted that he would not pull out of the parking lot.
The verbal exchange between them, which drew a crowd to the scene, later reportedly degenerated into a physical attack from the CCT chairman.
Mr. Danladi’s recent act comes barely two years after a young Nigerian Senator, Elisha Abbo was also caught on camera assaulting a citizen in a sex toy shop in Abuja.
Human rights activist, Hassan Soweto, said Mr. Danladi should be prosecuted in line with the law if found guilty of the act.
“There is a video showing the tribunal chairman assaulting another Nigerian, but I am saying this carefully because there has not been any independent verification done towards the findings of what really happened before the act.”
“Although, if it becomes the truth that the Code of Conduct Tribunal chairman was actually engaging in an assault of another Nigerian, it is condemnable in the eyes of all Nigerians and the world. It is a clear abuse of his office, something I think he should be prosecuted for in the line with the laws of the nation.”
The Code of Conduct Tribunal was set up by Section 20 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act, CAP C15, Volume 2, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004 to deal with complaints of corruption by public servants for the breaches of its provisions.
Since its establishment in January 1, 1991, trials and conviction of public servants suspected to have committed offences that qualify as acts of official corruption have been few.
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