Air Force men assaults business man for not giving First Lady right of way

The visit of Nigeria's First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, to Delta State for the PDP Women Rally was a bad omen for a Warri based business man, Larry Otu, the Chief Executive Officer of LYM Consult, who fell into the arms of some Air Force officials who beat him to a pulp for not leaving the Osubi Airstrip in the town for the visit of the Dame.

Otu, Warri, who was bruised and battered as well as having his money stolen in the process, narrated that he was at the airstrip to receive his technical partners from Canada who were to come in that same day, when men from the Warri Air Force Unit stationed at the facility pounced on him and attacked him.

He said:

"It happened at about 9 am, when our foreign partners arrived the airport and I was there to clear them at the Immigration desk. I drove to the gates to face interrogation from the Air Force men.

One asked if I knew the President’s wife was coming today. I said yes, but that I have come to pick my foreign partners. He asked what I do for a living; I said I own the company being visited by our technical partners and he said ‘as small as you are?’

He said okay, find me something. I said I cannot give you anything. So he ordered me to reverse my car and leave. He said I cannot drive in.

I reversed my car, drove back to the main road and was trekking down to go in when a team of the force men, numbering about eight, pounced on me."

They dragged me from there to a point behind their caravan office at the airport and continued the beating, kicking, punching and hitting me with their guns.

It took the intervention of one of my managers who approached one of the officers before the assault was halted.

But before I was left with a battered, bloodied face, N200,000 was taken from my pocket by one of them.

I know the man who started it all and I know the one that took N200,000 from my pocket. We cannot continue to live in this kind of country. Justice must be done."

The Commanding Officer at the 61 NAF Detachment of the Nigerian Air Force, Warri, Air Commodore A. D. Dudusola, however said that from the reports he had, Otu was rude to his men which made his men to pounce on him.

"Why must it be only him? That is the question that comes to mind. Others came to the airport, identified themselves properly and were allowed in.

Nobody was touched, so he must have been rude.

We can apologize to him later, but we had to do our job first so that somebody will not create problem for us."