Police arrest, detain ex- Ebonyi commissioner for alleged tax evasion

Police in Ebonyi State on Tuesday arrested a former Commissioner for Information and State Orientation in the state, Chief Abia Onyike, over alleged tax evasion and economic sabotage.

The ex-commissioner was detained for several hours at the state Police Command Headquarters in Abakaliki.

Onyike’s arrest followed a petition by the state Ministry of Internal Security and Border Peace that he had allegedly refused to pay his tenement rate and other payable taxes to the state government.

The state Commissioner for Internal Security and Border Peace, Stanley Emegha, who confirmed the development to journalists on Wednesday, said the former commissioner would be prosecuted.

He said: “Yes, this Office, Ministry of Internal Security and Border Peace, wrote that petition, because it’s part of our duty to enforce the law.

“Tenement rate is what we petitioned him again and tax evasion. This is because we can’t be pursuing the common people in the state and those big men won’t be made to equally pay it.”

Onyike also confirmed his arrest and subsequent detention by the police to journalists.

He said: “I was arrested and detained for hours for unjust reasons. The idea is to silence me from exposing the ills of the current administration in the state.

“Yes, I was detained for hours. Why? They said I have not paid the tenement rate; they equally said I have not been paying taxes. This is arrant nonsense because I have all my papers to prove I have been paying all these things.

“I retired in 2014 and since then I have been paying. I am a pensioner now and you don’t tax pensioners. I know why I’m being persecuted.”

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