COVID-19: How Nigeria Airforce brutalises doctor on essential duty

From Fisayo Syombo

On Monday, NAF soldiers in Port Harcourt manhandled a medical doctor. They slapped her, wrestled with her, damaged her phone & detained her at the isolation centre. The nametape of one of them reads ‘Bass MO’.

NAF wants to cover it up but this injustice must be punished.

Dr. Avwebo Otoide had just stepped out of her house and was walking along Ohiamini-Psychiatric Road, off Rumuola, when an officer disembarked from a light blue Hilux (patrolling with a light blue luxury bus), brandishing his gun and specifically pointing the barrel at her.

He landed a heavy slap on her left cheek after she’d said she was a doctor. And even after presenting her ID card, his first utterance was: “Are you the first doctor?” 

These were @NigAirForce men — what business did they have with land patrol?

Just because she attempted to capture the incident with her phone as they made to leave, they returned to whisk her into the luxury bus. 

@AvweboUkueku recalls that another soldier whose nametape reads ‘Bass MO’ was the one who attempted to forcefully take her phone away damaging the screen in the process. 

At the isolation centre, she was locked up by the Police for refusing to surrender her phone. She was only freed after the intervention of the state's Attorney-General, based on messages & calls she’d made to the NMA while in the bus. 

In this COVID-19 season when healthcare workers are staking their lives for the safety of the rest of us, the least they deserve is to be treated with dignity, which, in any case, is what every human merits irrespective of social status. 

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) must produce the officer who led the assault on Dr. Avwebo and make an example of him so that others all over the country who’re taking advantage of the lockdown to harass the public, particularly essential workers, can stop it.

The assaulter may be anonymous but ‘Bass MO’ isn’t unless the Air Force wants him to remain so.