Madam Nkechi Ikechukwu operates a cafeteria at Oyingbo area of Lagos. She is also a community leader and cofounder of a vigilance group. However, a couple of weeks ago, the group gave her the beating of her life. What could have gone amiss?
Madam Nkechi Ikechukwu is a known community leader in Oyingbo area of Lagos Mainland Local Government Area of Lagos State. Ikewchukwu, 37, is an indigene of Isiala-Mbano in Imo State.
Since she and her husband settled in the area, she had been a force to reckon with even among the notoriously tough elements that always converged in the area. Madam Ikechukwu operates a cafeteria along Railway Line in Oyingbo area of the state. She sells her food at night to drivers and all kinds of miscreants in the area.
Her shop is said to be the meeting point where the vigilance group members congregate before they commence the patrol of the stretch of Oyingbo and Apapa Road.
Ikechukwu, who is a mother of two boys, is always helped out at the canteen by her husband once he returns from work every day. Ironically on Wednesday, 10 April, 2013, the woman community leader got the beating of her life in the hands of the members of the vigilance group she helped set up and fund.
On that fateful day, Madam Ikechukwu reportedly had a shouting match with her husband over their wares, which made the man to leave the shop midway into the day’s sales, leaving the woman to carry her cross herself.
That was around midnight, the peak period. Before long, a swarm of customers besieged her and she was overwhelmed whom she could not cope with alone. The woman reportedly dashed home to appeal to her husband to come assist her in attending to the customers. Still the man refused.
A quarrel soon ensued between the husband and wife. By that time, the vigilance group had begun their patrol of the community. The quarrel of the couple, however, sent the vigilance group racing to the area.
It was reported that when the vigilance group members got there, they did all in their powers to mediate in the crisis but the couple continued in their fight, disturbing the peace of the community.
Whereas in that community, because of the troublesome nature of most residents, there had been an agreement to forcefully eject anyone who engaged in fighting or other anticommunity activities.
It was reported that the vigilance group, disturbed at the behaviour of one of their sponsors and officers, telephoned the chairman of the community who ordered that the same treatment as deemed fit a non member should be meted out to the woman and her husband.
After much persuasion and to no effect, the vigilance group reportedly dragged the woman and her feuding husband out of their home and put the house under lock and key.
Unknown to them, however, the couple’s two little boys were sleeping inside their living room. At this stage, Madam Ikechukwu became uncontrollable and perhaps more infuriated by the action of a group she funded and jointly set up. She reportedly engaged the leader of the team in another round of fighting.
The vigilance group did not waste time before they reportedly descended on her and gave her the beating of her life. In the ensuing struggle with them, she was allegedly wounded by one of the men with an iron rod.
Narrating her ordeal in the hands of the group she claimed that the group went beyond the normal practice and agreed terms and did not even consider she is a member of the community’s executive.
“I have to review my association with the community and the vigilance group. Imagine a group I spend my money and time to establish coming to beat me up and injuring me this way. Who else would they not do it to?
They claimed I was fighting with my husband and the question is that who among them does not quarrel with his wife?” she queried. “I have to take the matter up with them because when they dragged me and my husband out of the house, they locked our two children inside and I had to fight for my children. But a Pastor among them asked them to beat me and lock my door,” she said.
Elom Ikechukwu, the husband she was said to be fighting before the vigilance group pounced on her added: “I think the vigilance group members went above their brief in their action.
It is true that my wife and I were quarrelling but that does not mean they should come into our apartment and lock us out.” Speaking with Saturday Mirror on the matter, Ishola Musbau Agbodemu, Chairman of Ifesowapo Otto-Ilogbo Extension Community claimed that the woman was part of the executive that outlawed fighting and disturbance of the community.
Agbodemu claimed the law had been in existence for four years now and that many people had been caught in the act. According to the community leader, Madam Ikechukwu is a drunkard known to all in the community.
He claimed that once she is drunk, the woman community leader would start to fight people in the area and also begin to make noise disturbing the peace of other residents. “I laugh when you tell me that Madam Ikechukwu claimed she was molested and attacked. Let me tell you straight that the woman is a drunkard and a great troublemaker and we had told her many times at our meetings that the law is no respecter of anyone.
“When the Security and Reconciliation Task Force of the community called to report her fight with her husband and the disturbance the community’s peace, I tried to call her to order but she would not listen to my words. We had no choice but to apply the laws,” Agbodemu said.
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