While the legal community remains in a state of profound grief and mourning over the extrajudicial killing of Peter Ihiemekpen, Esq. by a trigger-happy officer in Owerri, we are once again forced to confront a savage reality. The news of the brutalization of Barr. Charles Ifeanyi by the OCHA Brigade—an enforcement arm of the Anambra State Government—is a devastating blow to the Rule of Law.

We are reliably informed that Barr. Charles Ifeanyi was subjected to an unprovoked and savage assault, beaten to a pulp, and subsequently locked up by agents of the OCHA Brigade. Shockingly, when fellow colleagues arrived to secure his bail and uphold his fundamental rights, they were met with further hostility and threatened with detention.

This behavior is not only “nasty and brutish” but represents a total collapse of civil conduct within a state-sponsored agency.

The OCHA Brigade is rapidly evolving into a state-sponsored terrorist group. I recall with bitterness the reports from last September, where reckless discharge of firearms by this group allegedly claimed the lives of innocent citizens, including a pregnant woman. This latest attack on a legal practitioner confirms a dangerous pattern of impunity that must be extinguished immediately

Lawyers are ministers in the temple of justice, carrying out constitutional duties that are essential to a functional democracy. We will not be humiliated, nor will we allow our colleagues to be treated as common criminals by a lawless brigade.

The specific culprits who brutalized and unlawfully detained Charles Ifeanyi, Esq. must be identified, arrested, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
An attack on one lawyer is an attack on the entire Bar and the justice system itself. The Government of Anambra State must act now to prove that it does not sanction the torture of its citizens or the intimidation of the legal profession.

Justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done.