Why police are after us -Norsemen

Magnus Eze, Enugu
 
No fewer than 20 members of a humanitarian organisation, De Norsemen Klub International (DNKI), were on Monady, paraded as common criminals at the Enugu State Police Command.
The police had last weekend, allegedly disrupted the group’s South East zonal conference at a highbrow hotel in GRA, Enugu, and arrested some of their members.
Leader of the club in the South East, Comarde Okenwa Uka, who addressed newsmen at the premises of the magistrate court, where they were arraigned and subsequently granted bail by Magistrate Dennis Eko, accused the police of witch hunting them for allegedly failing to give N2million to the officer in charge of the anti-cult unit of the command.
Explaining how the police in Enugu branded the organization a cult group, he said that they were shocked to hear from the police prosecutor that the evidence they had against them was the banner publicly displayed for the event at the event centre.
He said: “They told the court that was the only proof why they suspected that we belong to a cult group.”
Uka stated that they had a month ahead of the conference written to the security agencies about the programme and were even invited by the Department of State Services (DSS) who gave them clearance.
He said: “What led to our arrest can only be defined by the man who led the arrest DSP, Chinedu Ekelemu. Prior to the date of our event, we wrote to the police and Department of State Services, notifying them of our event scheduled to hold between August 6 and 8. DSS invited us for interview, we went and they asked us some questions and after they said we should go ahead with the event. It was an event we have done across the whole country. Even in April this year, we were in Dubai, United Arab Emirate. We had gone to Accra, Ghana last year. In December 2018, we were in Aba, Abia state. It is just a convention where we come together and talk about contemporary issues and at the end of each programme we issue a communique where we raise issues for the nation on how to move the nation forward. We forward them to the government. So, for me after going to see the officer in-charge of anti-cult unit of the state police command, we informed him and he demanded for N2million. I told him that we had already written to his commissioner. He replied okay since we have written to the police commissioner.
“I was surprised when on Friday, the day the event was scheduled to take place at about 6.30am, he came to the venue. I took him to the restaurant and after discussion he left. The programme continued. We had charity visitation that day and after the event we came back to the hotel because we came with our families.” We had our night outing in the hotel. On Saturday morning, we played our interstate tournament at Ngwo Park under their supervision because they were following us everywhere we were going. After the tournament, we returned to the event centre.
“At 3pm, we started our public lecture and they were inside the hall together with personnel of DSS. After the session, we ended with closing prayer. We were going to have our entertainment when some of the men of anti-cult came to me, saying that their Oga said the CP wanted to see me and four other leaders of the club. That was at 7.30pm. So, we were with them believing we were going to see the CP when they diverted to the anti-cult unit. They gave us all the humiliation from that Saturday, before bringing us to court,” he stated.