Emmanuel Brown, 23, the son of Philomena Namoko, a female soldier attached to the Irise Engineer Barracks, 2nd Division, Ogun State, has been allegedly detained by the Nigerian military.
Our correspondent reported that shortly after Brown’s mother was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Yaba, she was locked up in a security room by a female army lieutenant colonel for giving an interview to Punch.
In an interview with a correspondent, Brown explained how the soldiers beat her mother and falsely accused her of having a mental illness and sent her to a psychiatric hospital.
In an interview with Sunday Punch, Ms Nnamoko accused her boss of sexual harassment and abuse, claiming that he had written her 10 termination letters without his approval.
However, in a recorded audio memo released to Sunday Punch by Ms Nnamoko’s lawyer, Mr Kayode Oshiemi, our correspondent can hear Ms Nnamoko lamenting being locked in the surveillance room. Ta.
“They didn’t want to let me out of here and locked my child in the security room because the child spoke to the Punch newspaper,” she was quoted as saying. Based on this premise, civilian officials concluded that I would be admitted here (a psychiatric hospital) for a month because I had attempted suicide, but I had never attempted suicide.
“The most painful thing was my child being held in the security room by a female lieutenant colonel.”
Efforts to speak to the Director of Army Public Relations, Major General Nwachukwu Onyema, were unsuccessful as his phone number could not be reached and at the time of filing this report, he had responded to messages sent on SMS and WhatsApp. It turns out he hasn’t responded.
However, 35th Artillery Brigade spokesman Lt. Col. Mohamed Goni said, “The whole concept of your story is incorrect and you did not contact me at that time to clarify the matter.” .
“We cannot provide you with fictitious information to work with. Come on, join us in investigative journalism and see for yourself. Without factual evidence, it is impossible to write such a sensitive report. We cannot,” Goni said.
Following the incident, his attorney said Brown’s arrest was unlawful.
Oshiemi, “The boy went to see his mother and the boy was locked up. He is currently in a cell in the Nigerian army because he went to make a publication about his mother.”
“They don’t want us to go to court for the abuse they committed against the woman (Philomena), so they are currently locking up her son in a security room. He did nothing wrong, just agreed to be interviewed. That is illegal detention of a civilian.
The lawyer told Sunday Punch that attempts to contact the soldier’s son were unsuccessful.
“When I called the boy’s mobile phone, I found out that someone else was using the phone to chat with me on WhatsApp. Later, the boy was in the guard room and when I It turned out that he wasn’t the person I was communicating with.
“I didn’t know their identity, so I sent them a message saying that I knew the boy was being illegally detained, according to his mother, and that he was a civilian, not a military member, and that he would be detained. He explained that he intended to take action because it should not be done.
“About 30 minutes later, my son called me and told me he had been released. I asked him why he had been detained and he claimed that a lieutenant colonel had published the matter in the newspaper, which led to his arrest. I explained.”