Judiciary
G-COMPLEX Nigeria Limited, an Abuja-based construction company, has called for justice over alleged attack on its men by officials of Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) task force.
The Managing Director of the company, Alhaji Abdulhamid Zari, made the call while addressing newsmen in Abuja on Thursday.
Zari, who displayed pictures of his seven staff allegedly machetted by men of AMAC task force, expressed dismay at the incident.
He appealed to the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to urgently intervene in the matter with a view to bringing the perpetrators to book.
According to him, it is wrong for some agents of government “to be on the highway with weapons in the name of revenue collection.
“On Wednesday, I was called by the driver of our pickup van that on his way to convey materials and take staff from Idu to our yard in Jabi, task force officials blocked him at Gwarimpa junction and demanded that he should provide daily receipt of AMAC.
“And he said he works for a construction company and there is no need for him to have such receipt. From that point, these people insisted that it is either he pays the money or they will confiscate his vehicle and because they are in large number, he succumbed to pay the money.
“They demanded for N200 and as soon as he brought the money out to pay, they demanded for the particulars of the vehicle, immediately he showed them, they said the car does not have a sticker which they asked to pay N35,000 for it.
“So, he was now forced to call superior officers of the company and before they got there, they had towed the vehicle to their office in Jabi.
“The moment they saw my staff coming, they started harassing them. They used cutlass to cut seven of our workers. Some had machete cuts on their heads, others had their hands chopped off,” he explained.
He said the injured staff had been hospitalised at Maitama General Hospital while the matter had been reported at Utako police station.
Reacting, Mr Douglas Badi, Head of Operations, AMAC Task Force on haulage, light and heavy duty vehicles, said that it was the construction workers that started the attack on the revenue officials.
Badi said: “When the driver was brought to the office, I told him he should not pack as I didn’t want a situation where you’ll start having physical contact.
“He now talked to the boss on phone who told them that he was going to send his boys. I sat with some of our staff and I saw some boys numbering about 30, they were coming from the other side of the road where their vehicles were packed.
“We now sent two of our staff to the other side to do surveillance there. We traced them there and when we saw them, we asked the security to detain them.
“We came back to this place and the next thing we saw was that one of their staff struck our staff with a shovel on the face and on his hand.
“Right now, the doctors at the Gwarimpa General Hospital are going to carry out a major corrective surgery on his hand because the thing affected his vein that he cannot move his hand.
“When this happened we held their boys and in the process, the police said we should tow the Hilux van because we deflated the tyres.”
The AMAC official said the vehicles had already been moved to the police station in Utako for further investigation.
According to the AMAC official, his men have been invited by Utako police division office and their statements have been taken.
Efforts to speak with the Utako Police Divisional Officer failed as the officer on duty told NAN correspondent that the offcer in charge was not on duty.
NAN
– Jan. 15, 2021 @ 08:25 GMT /
Tags: Construction firm seeks justice over attack on workers by AMAC task force team
