The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) Umar Danladi, has been caught on camera physically assaulting a security guard at Banex Plaza in Wuse, Abuja.
In a five-minute video that has gone viral online, Mr Danlandi was seen slapping and kicking the yet-to-be-identified security guard, while police officers suspected to be attached to him were trying to restrain him from attacking the guard.
The crowd around the scene was heard shouting “Go away, go away, oga go inside your car, respect yourself.
A plastic bottle was seen hauled at his vehicle while the policemen were struggling to calm Mr Danlandi.
The voice from the person filming the scene was heard saying “You are not the most powerful person here, they will beat you here”.
The voice also said in the video clip that the mirror of Mr Danladi’s black sport utility vehicle SUV was smashed.
The CCT chairman was eventually pulled back into his vehicle by the policemen.
But as the vehicle was leaving the premises, the gate was shut.
The vehicle, which had others in its front, was trying to find its way out of the premises when the video ended.
‘CCT chairman didn’t assault guard’
When contacted by the media, the head of CCT’s media relation, Ibraheem Al-Hassan, said Mr Danladi did not assault the guard, ”but was the one assaulted during the altercation” that ensued over parking space on the premises of the shopping plaza.
“The Chairman did not assault the guard. The crowd assaulted the chairman,” Mr Al-Hassan said.
He also said the policemen seen in the video clip were not Mr Danladi’s security details but “the policemen in the neighbourhood who came to rescue him”.
“The chairman only went to the plaza with his driver. And if not for the intervention of the policemen from the neighbourhood and also from Maitama Police Station, he could have been lynched,” he added.
From parking lot altercation to assault
The media’s findings showed that the pandemonium started with an altercation between Mr Danladi and the guard over a parking space on the Banex premise on Monday.
Mr Danladi was said to have arrived the premises at about noon on Monday for a phone repair.
On getting to the premises, his driver parked at an open parking lot, but the guard who sighted them from a distance insisted that they could not park there.
The CCT chairman insisted that he would not pull out of the parking lot.
The verbal exchange between them which drew a crowd to the scene later reportedly degenerated into a physical attack from the CCT chairman.
Mr Danladi’s recent act comes barely two years after a Nigerian senator, Elisha Abbo, a young Nigerian senator was also caught on camera assaulting a citizen.
Human rights activist, Hassan Soweto, said Mr Danladi should be prosecuted in line with the law if found guilty of the act.
“There is a video showing the tribunal chairman assaulting another Nigerian, but I am saying this carefully because there has not been any independent verification done towards the findings of what really happened before the act.
“Although, if it becomes the truth that the Code of Conduct Tribunal chairman was actually engaging in an assault of another Nigerian, it is condemnable in the eyes of all Nigerians and the world. It is a clear abuse of his office, something I think he should be prosecuted for in the line with the laws of the nation.
The Code of Conduct Tribunal was set up by Section 20 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act, CAP C15, Volume 2, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004 to deal with complaints of corruption by public servants for the breaches of its provisions.
Since its establishment January 1, 1991, trials and conviction of public servants suspected to have committed offences that qualify as acts of official corruption have been few.
