Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
The Edo Special Security Squad have reportedly molested a journalist, Hassan Quadri, who works with a private broadcasting station in Benin.
Quadri, was allegedly beaten by members of the squad when they invaded the hotel he was lodging.
In a viral video posted on his Facebook page, Quadri said the room he was putting up at the hotel was invaded in commando style by the squad members who assaulted him.
According to Quadri “As you all know, I do not look for trouble, I do my work diligently. I don t even get involved in anything bad.
“Despite the way things are, that does not mean that every youth in Edo state are criminals. It doesn’t mean that everybody in Edo State is a criminal.
“At least you give them the leverage to introduce themselves and ask questions but instead you put tyrants on the road. Edo State government. I will call them tyrants even though you are a uniform man. You burst into my room and I asked a simple question, who are you? Who are you looking for?
“Normally, you should introduce yourself and you said you want to search and I told you to search. The next thing you are ordering me from my room and I should enter your bus. To where? Do I know who you are and where you are going to?
“Edo State is hot right now. I should just follow you? No ID card. Anybody can wear a Police uniform.
You came into my room and before I knew it one of them slapped me. And before I could raise my head the other one tears gassed me in a civilized country. Edo State, what is happening?
“They also tore my clothes. Some of them were even going for my gold necklace. Is that why you are here? I was very vigilant to protect my property. They dragged me to Oluku junction.
“But if not the intervention of the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Monday Okpebholo, Mr Fred Itua, it would have been worse.
“The CPS was even telling them to leave me alone and telling them who I am but they did not hear. It took a lot of intervention from the CPS before they could leave me.
“If not for the CPS I would have been in detention or in prison today for what I don’t know. They are just gathering people. Is that the problem?. There are a lot of people that are killing our brothers, fathers and everybody in the farms and nobody is doing anything about it.
“If you must fight anything cultism, is that the right way to go about it? You are arresting youths that are not doing anything on the roads. People that are going about their daily businesses.
“Don’t you know where the real criminals are? You people should check yourself if you are not even among the cultists.They stole my properties. What nonsense is all these?
“If not for the CPS, I would have been behind the bar, and they would tag me as a cultist.
“Edo State, we can do better than this. This is not the way forward.
“They beat me and dragged me on the ground like a thief. They wounded me on the forehead. Wound I never get in my life”, he narrated.
Confirming the incident, in a phone in a programme in another private broadcasting station in Benin, Itua said he was with the squad when the incident happened.
Itua described the action of some of the members of the squad as unfortunate.
“In the case of our colleague, when they got to the hotel, he was one of those that they brought out. Immediately, I saw him from a distance, I quickly ran to meet them.
“I went almost physical with members of the squad telling them they cannot arrest him because I know him as a journalist. When they dragged him into the bus, I went to remove him from it.
“That is how he came out of the bus and I apologized to him, that it is a mistaken identity.
Governor Okpebholo had last Sunday announced the establishment of the Special Security Squad geared towards flushing out kidnappers, cultists and other criminals in the state.