Army presented palace workers as suspected Avengers, residents claim

There seems to be growing controversy surrounding the identity of suspected members of the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, arrested and paraded by the Nigerian army as residents of Oporosa, headquarters of Gbaramatu Kingdom, Warri South Local Government Area of Delta State, insisted that the 10 ‘suspects’ were workers in the area.

According to residents who witnessed the arrest of the alleged suspect, they revealed that just like the five Chevron contract workers who were found innocent and released, those who were picked up last Saturday were just workers in the palace.

Read also: Invasion of Gbaramatu: Avengers mock Tompolo, Nigerian Army

A source in the community, Nadi Mogbeyi, said though they were against any criminality in the area, the so-called suspects were residents struggling to make ends meet in the community.

“They caught so many people. I was in hiding, watching them as they were picking people up. They arrested one Moses Andrew, a mechanic that was invited from Warri to come and fix a Dana vehicle here; one cook, called Philip, he is a cook in the guesthouse; he was tortured from morning. They were forcing him to confess what he doesn’t know.

“They tied them with just his underwear on. I heard them shouting ‘I don die’. They went into the shrine, came out and took them away in some boats.

“The mechanic we brought to fix the car because of the construction work going on here, he came on Friday evening. He didn’t know what happened. They invaded the palace and picked him up.

“Our generating set went off because the diesel was exhausted. They took the mechanic to the plant that supplies light to the palace. They forced him to switch on the plant and then tied him back when he finished before taking him away.

“They also arrested Orumina Odiki, a security man in the guesthouse, then Ebierieri, who sews and designs the king’s clothes. Those were the ones I know,” he said.

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