Revisiting Kenneth Gbagi’s case file

In the last quarter of 2020, Mohammed Adamu, the Inspector General of Police at the time, had reason to constitute a 50-man squad for an assignment in Delta State. They were to arrest Kenneth Omemavwa Gbagi, a businessman and politician who had been fingered in a multiple case of assault, brutality and battery, against some of his staff. 

Gloria Oguzie, Victor Ephraim, Precious Archibong and Roseline Okiemute were all employees of Signatious Hotels and Suites, owned  by Gbagi, which is located in Warri, Delta State. In an account rendered by Oguzie in an interview on Arise Television conducted by Jemima Bolokor, all was well until August 30, 2020, when a guest came calling late in the night. A guest came to seek accommodation, but didn’t have cash on him. Oguzie said they were about turning the guest down, but he pleaded to transfer money into the account of the organisation. Because it was late and the transfer could not be verified until working hours the next day, the staffers declined. The guest came up with a suggestion that he could transfer the money into the accounts of one of the staff, who in turn could cash the money and pay into the organisation’s account.

Oguzie, in her account, said since her debit card was not with her at the time, it was mutually agreed that Ephraim, who was the concierge, should receive the transfer and revert to the hotel the next morning. This exactly they did to forestall any losses to their organisation. The guest stayed for four days at the end of which he gave tips to his minders in the hotel, a standard practice in the hospitality industry.

September 18, 2020, Gbagi stormed the hotel and summoned Oguzie to his office. He accused her of conniving with her colleagues to defraud him. Oguzie answered in the negative. Gbagi asked the police escorts working with him to strip her naked. She pleaded innocence and prayed her traducers that she was married and pregnant. All entreaties to Gbagi fell on deaf ears as she was undressing and bundled into the storage of the hotel. The same treatment was meted to Ephraim, Archibong and Okiemute. At gunpoint, she was asked to implicate herself by agreeing that she stole from the hotel, whatever her account balance was. The debit cards of all four of them were all seized and the hotel cashier asked to withdraw all their balances.

Not done, Gbagi asked that Oguzie, Ephraim, Archibong and Okiemute be paraded around the hotel in their nakedness, from the restaurant through the reception, even in the present of intending guests. Gbagi allegedly asked his 10 year old son, Egba, to record the charade and to take photographs for hoisting on the internet.

To underscore his influence in the community, Gbagi called the divisional police officer to send a truck to pick up his staff, assuring them they would be jailed for five years each, so long as he remained the “big man” in his environment. They were handcuffed and paraded on the adjoining street even when they were still in their underwears. Oguzie and her colleagues were detained for three days, before they were released on bail course of the intervention of their lawyers. When they appeared in court, Gbagi laid claims to the exact amounts of money in their individual accounts, including the N161,000 Oguzie had saved over time as an expectant mother.

Public outrage greeted this raw abuse of power, this blatant oppression of the underprivileged, this crass dehumanisation of supposedly innocent people. The Delta State Police Command that September 2020, sent several messages to Gbagi inviting him for questioning. When he was not attending the funeral of a relative, he pleaded he had an appearance in court and would honour the invitation of the police once he was done. Such were the pranks Gbagi played on the police. Indeed, at some point, Gbagi reportedly resorted to blackmail and antagonism of the erstwhile Delta State Police Commissioner, Hafiz Inuwa, questioning his interest in the case. It was at this point that the Nigeria Police declared Gbagi a wanted man.

According to reports, Gbagi went underground for eight months when the police turned the heat on his backside. He is said to have recently reappeared in the local press, visiting the new Delta State Police Commissioner and smiling in the photographs to wit.

Gbagi apparently has a history of assault and battery against his staff. Lucy Obire one of his former employees, alleged that she was “abducted, kidnapped and tortured by Gbagi in company of his security guards, in April 2019.” In a manner similar to the disempowerment suffered by Oguzie and her colleagues, Obire who used to work with Gbagi’s cinema house, was forced to transfer all the money in her account, to Gbagi. Obire’s photographs with reddened and blistered face and body, spoke with an online medium, Barristerng.com.

While the International Federation of Female Lawyers, FIDA, Delta State chapter, has since expressed keen interest in the case of Oguzie and  company, Obire reported her experience to the Conference of the Actualization of Human Rights. Stellamaris Mejulu, Chairperson of FIDA, Delta State, says the body is committed to seeking justice for all four victims of Gbagi’s high-handedness and condescending humiliation.

Kenneth Gbagi prides himself as an attorney, a criminologist, an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He served as Minister of State in the Federal Ministry of Education in the twilight of the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. His tenure was so brief and uneventful, he is scarcely remembered to have held that office. From all indications, he has made good for himself, with business interests straddling real estate, hospitality, entertainment and private security services, among others. Among his people in Okpeland in the Urhobo country, he is the Ochuko of Okpe. in recent weeks and months, Gbagi has been touted as a gubernatorial hopeful in Delta State, a potential successor to the incumbent, Ifeanyi Okowa.

But Gbagi is bad example of who and what an educated, enlightened and experienced person should be. As a lawyer, he has conducted himself with phenomenal crudity and lawlessness, the kind of person who should be disowned by the Nigerian bar for being such a disgraceful representative of the body. He once served as a Minister of the Federal Republic, a dignified office which made him a member of the Federal Executive Council at some point in the nation’s history. Indeed, Gbagi continues to wear this appellation around his neck like a prized necklace, over one decade since he left office.

Gbagi is an archetypal petit bourgeois who believes the less privileged must remain his eternal footstool. His serial deployment of his uniformed security aides to subjugate, demean and disgrace his employees, is Illustrative of a character prone to abuse of power, should he find himself in a position of authority. In every material particular, Gbagi reminds of the legendary Uganda butcher, Idi Amin Dada and his erstwhile colleague in the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, who revelled with sadistic delight at the discomfiture of their subjects. What lessons does Gbagi want to teach his own 10 year old son, Egba, before whom he undressed men and women, old enough to be his mother? Isn’t that little boy going to grow up with a condescending disposition towards people?

Admitted the new Inspector General of Police, IGP Usman Baba Alkali is still settling down in his new position, he must prioritise the interrogation of this case file to its fair and logical conclusion. The case file must be speedily exhumed from the dust-gathering shelf it has been in the last eight months. Nobody is above the law. For starters, Gbagi’s police aides who have been cited as his accomplices in his multifarious acts of repression, must be recalled immediately. Gbagi is no more entitled to state-provided security, than the rest of us Nigerians.

Indeed, Gbagi cannot be an artful dodger evading arrest and prosecution because he is a “former minister,” when even former governors are serving their terms behind bars for many years now and still counting. If Gbagi is too big for the Delta State Police, he cannot be bigger than Louis Edet headquarters of the force.

Justice must be seen to be adequately served to the vilified.

Olusunle, PhD, is a member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, NGE.