By Our Correspondent
Police personnel and a court bailiff are under scrutiny in Awka, Anambra State, for allegedly assisting the Catholic Diocese of Awka to forcibly eject tenants from a row of shops in the state capital, an operation that resulted in the destruction of goods estimated at over N15 million.
The incident occurred on Thursday along Jerome Udorji Secretariat Road, where shop owners said they arrived to find stern-looking policemen and court officials carrying out an eviction order.
According to witnesses, the enforcement team, acting on a magistrate court judgment, broke into the shops and threw the occupants’ goods into the open, leaving them exposed to a downpour.
The property, which has been at the centre of a protracted ownership dispute, was reportedly built by a late Reverend Father who, before his death, handed it over to his nephew.
After his demise, the Awka Catholic Diocese approached the court, claiming ownership of the property. The court eventually ruled in favour of the church, a judgment that was enforced on Thursday morning.
The tenants, however, alleged that they were neither informed about the case nor given any notice to vacate the premises before the eviction.
They said the sudden action not only caused losses running into millions of naira but also left them traumatized.
Comrade Osita Obi, a human rights activist and convener of the Recover Nigeria Project, who was among those affected, said he was shocked when he received a call that security operatives were breaking into his wife’s shop.
“This is my wife’s shop. She is out of town, and I had gone for physiotherapy when I got the call. By the time I got here, they had thrown everything into the rain. I personally lost goods worth over five million naira,” he said.
Obi explained that many of his co-tenants, some of whom had just paid their rent and stocked their shops with new goods, also lost merchandise worth about nine million naira.
He maintained that while they had no quarrel with the ownership of the property, the manner of the eviction was unjust and high-handed.
“If we had been given just two days’ notice, we would have packed our things and avoided this loss. We did not even know there was a case in court. Our former landlord did not tell us anything,” he said.
Following the incident, Obi said he had written a petition to the Awka Area Commander of Police, who has since invited him for a meeting.
“We will pursue this matter to its conclusion. What happened to us is a grave injustice,” he vowed.
The development has triggered criticism from legal experts and human rights advocates, who insist that due process requires tenants to be notified before any judgment is enforced.
As of the time of filing this report, neither the Awka Catholic Diocese nor the Anambra State Police Command had issued an official statement on the matter.
