ABUJA ESTATE UNDER SIEGE: TENANTS ACCUSE POLICE DSP OF TERROR, DEATH THREATS

Residents of Oduah Estate in Abuja are living in fear and uncertainty amid a campaign of terror, intimidation, and death threats allegedly orchestrated by a serving police officer, DSP Jeffery Ugochukwu.

According to a series of “Save Our Souls” petitions addressed to the Inspector-General of Police, the Force Provost Marshal, and the Karu Area Command, Ugochukwu has leveraged his position to act with impunity, endangering the lives of dozens of families, including children, nursing mothers, and a pregnant woman.

The petitions detail deliberate acts of vandalism and sabotage, including cutting the main electric line, destroying estate water pipes, and pouring palm oil across a shared lobby.

Tenants have also accused Ugochukwu of making repeated threats of lethal violence, including declaring “You should continue; very soon I will get my rifle and fire everybody.”

The situation has sparked concerns of a tragedy, with tenants sleeping in shifts and keeping watch over their families at night.

“We just want to live without fear in our own homes,” one resident said.

Comrade James Ezema, a journalist and National Vice President of the Nigerian Guild of Investigative Journalists, is among those targeted by Ugochukwu.

“I was dumbfounded because there has been no personal issue with him to warrant his manhunt for me,” Ezema said. “Nigerians should hold DSP Jeffery Ugochukwu and the Nigeria Police Force responsible if anything happens to me, my loved ones, or any tenant.”

Ezema has appealed to the Police Service Commission for urgent intervention, citing the officer’s alleged boasts of having a Deputy Inspector-General of Police as his godfather.

The FCT Command’s Police Complaints Response Unit has invited the complainants for a meeting, with the PPRO FCT Command responding to a video of the officer threatening and armed with a jackknife, “Noted I have even started acting on it too”.