Okafor, who works with a cable television station, Modern Communications Limited, MCL TV, in Umuahia, explained that the operatives immediately ransacked her apartment and those of her neighbours, asking for phones, laptops car keys after assaulting her brothers.
According to the journalist, “Exactly 1:36am, I was alerted by my brother that there are armed robbers at my gate trying to make their way into the compound. Because it was an electric fence, I didn’t bother enough because I felt they can’t make their way in. But I was wrong. They finally made their way into the compound at 2am. Over 25 of them with two hilux buses, masked and dressed in black vest. A huge one climbed the fence, with a plier and immediately cut off a few of the wires, jumped into the compound and with an axe, broke the gate.They made their first entry into my apartment. As a nude sleeper, while they tried to make their way into the compound, I found something to wear while my brothers and I were thinking of a way of escape.
“The worst case scenario for me is that they will rape or take the only valuable available. So, I prepared my mind. The next thing I realized was that about 7 of them were already in my room with shouts of “lie down, face down, on the light, where’s your phone, where’s your car key, where’s this and that. Seeing over 25 hefty men with different kinds of guns, I handed the phone to them with the key, before then, they have already taken hold of my laptop. I turned to be sure these were armed robbers and they asked for my passwords to all the devices collected with masking tape to identify each.
“Still in shock, I heard someone destroying everything in the kitchen, my room, that of my brothers and all the drawers. I was still asking myself what’s happening. They asked me to stand and follow them downstairs. They unmasked themselves. All my neighbours went through the same pain. They gave my brothers the beating of their lives, carried my neighbour downstairs and tried unlocking all the cars in the compound.
She further stated that after searching through her phones and learnt that she was a journalist, the EFCC operatives allegedly sighed that they have wasted their time on what was obviously a ‘mistaken mission’.
“They spent over an hour molesting and destroying things in my compound. I feel pained and embarrassed right now. Is this how EFCC operate? How did we get here? Who is the informant?”
Efforts to get the reaction of the EFCC’s South East zonal office in Enugu was unsuccessful.
