The Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) on Tuesday reacted to a video clip showing how its chairman, Umar Danladi, physically assaulted a security guard at Banex Plaza in Wuse, Abuja.
Mr Danladi was seen in a viral five-minute video slapping and kicking the yet-to-be-identified security guard.
This newspaper had contacted the Head, Press and Public Relations of the CCT, Ibraheem Al-Hassan, who denied that Mr Danladi assaulted the guard.
‘Security guard was rude’
In a later statement, titled, ‘I was rather assaulted – CCT Chairman’, on Tuesday, Mr Al-Hassan accused the guard of being rude and issuing a threat against the tribunal chairman following an altercation between them over a parking space on the plaza’s premises on Monday.
“Though the chairman didn’t identify himself, because, to him, it was needless, and it was a place he visited often, the boy was rude in his approach and threatened to deal with the chairman if he refused to leave the scene,” Mr Al-Hassan stated.
Narrating how the incident happened, the official said the plaza had been Mr Danladi’s “usual place of visits for the past 18 years for shopping and repairs of his phones” and he had never had any dispute with anyone during any of his visits to the place.
“Unfortunately, yesterday’s altercations started over a parking lot, which the chairman met vacant and it was directly opposite a shop where he wanted to make a purchase and to fix his phone when the young security guard sighted him and ordered that the chairman should not park his car in that particular empty space,” the statement added.
Mr Al-Hassan, who was responding to media reports on the incident did not deny that the CCT chairman slapped and kicked the security guard.
‘Assaulted by miscreants’
But he stated that Mr Danladi was assaulted by “some miscreants” whom he said ordered the closure of the gate “before the arrival of police team from Maitama Police Station”.
The spokesperson stated that Mr Danladi had not visited the plaza ”to cause trouble”, adding that the policemen seen in the video clip were not his security details.
“Again, if the chairman had gone there to cause trouble or intimidate someone, as suggested in the report, he would have gone there in his full official paraphernalia, but he went there alone with his younger brother,” the statement stated.
Many Nigerians have since taken to their various social media handles to demand proper investigations into the assault against the security guard.
Our findings
PREMIUM TIMES’ findings showed that the pandemonium started with an altercation between Mr Danladi and the guard over a parking space on the Banex premises on Monday.
Mr Danladi was said to have arrived at the premises at about noon on Monday for a phone repair.
On getting to the premises, his driver had parked at an open parking space, but the guard who sighted them from a distance insisted they could not park there.
The CCT chairman insisted that he would not pull out of the parking lot.
The verbal exchange between them, which drew a crowd to the scene, later reportedly degenerated into a physical attack on the guard by the CCT chairman.
Premium Times