Emmerging reports suggest that a soldier has brutally beaten a bus driver for what witnesses have termed a flimsy excuse.
The soldier simply identified as Emmanuel B J, reportedly battered one Moshood Olaniyi on Wednesday, February 17. According to The Punch, Olaniyi was brutalised at the Ojodu-Berger motor park, for allegedly sneering at the soldier. Sources reveal that the soldier initially pounced on Olaniyi and thrashed him with horse whip before he used his fists to punch him.
Emmanuel ignored pleas by passersby and food vendors at the park, he removed the vehicle’s key from the ignition, dragged Olaniyi down from the bus and battered him the more.
The soldier held Olaniyi’s waistband and threatened to kill the driver boasting that nobody would query him if he killed the driver. When the crowd urged the soldier to state the driver’s offence, Emmanuel B J only slapped Olaniyi again for more than 12 times.
He said: “Who does he think he is? I will kill him and nobody will query me. I have killed many people who are older than this idiot (Olaniyi) in the past and nobody queried me for that. “The idiot attempted to hit me while reversing his vehicle and when I asked him why, he just sneered at me. If at all he is older than me, I don’t care.
I will do to him what he will never forget for the rest of his life.” Emmanuel reportedly dragged Olaniyi to the park of commercial motorcycle operators, a distance of about 50 metres, before he released him after much pleading that lasted for about 45 minutes. Olaniyi who could barely open his mouth to talk denied that he sneered at the soldier.
The battered driver said he was reversing his vehicle when the soldier suddenly pounced on him. One of the witnesses, who identified himself simply as Festus, said the beating was too much, adding that he did not expect that Olaniyi could still stand on his feet after the soldier released him. Festus said it was the beating that drew his attention from where he was fixing some mechanical faults in his vehicle.
“I did not know the cause of the disagreement between Olaniyi and the soldier, but from what I saw, Olaniyi was sitting in his vehicle when the soldier started beating him. I didn’t know whether Olaniyi sneered at the soldier or not,” he said. Reacting to the alleged assault, the spokesperson for 82 Division, Nigerian Army, Lagos, Col Kingsley Samuel said he was yet to confirm the identity of the soldier, but promised to investigate the assault. Col Samuel said:
“We don’t know the identity of the soldier. Lagos is a big community; anybody can put on army uniform and impersonate being a soldier. We have had cases of impersonation before, but if any personnel of the organisation I work with commits a crime of that nature, the person will be dealt with.” “We have to find out if Emmanuel is a genuine soldier who is not impersonating.
This is one of the things we will investigate. And if he is a soldier, we will find out the unit he belongs to. But I assure you that we will do our investigation,” the army spokesman said. It would be recalled that in recent times, the Nigerian army has be heavily criticised both locally and internationally for constant infringements on the rights of civilians.
The video of a young man who was tortured by Nigerian cadets recently generated so much heat over the media, stirring dust over the operations of the army and the adherence to military rules of engagement within a civil society.
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