Assault: Onyeka Onwenu Dragged to NHRC By Businesswoman

A business woman, Mrs. Olajoke Adesipe, has accused popular musician, Onyeka Onwenu, of assault and she has thus petitioned the National Human Rights Commission, after she was forcefully evicted from her shop at the National Centre for Women Development, Abuja on the order of Onyeka, who is the new DG.

Mrs Adesipe, in the letter dated March 3, 2014, claimed that Onwenu directed security officers to throw her wares out of her shop, adding that she was assaulted on the instruction of Madam Onwenu when she took the pictures of the incident.

The business woman, who sells textiles, said she was a yearly tenant, adding that her current tenancy would not end until December, 2014. Mrs Adesipe petition reads:

“On January 21, I heard that the DG might likely eject me even when my rent is still valid. On February 13, I got a call from Onwenu asking why I had not moved out of the shop and I told her that nobody had given me an allocation letter for the new shop as she promised.

“She said if I failed to move out by February 14, she would send for State Security Service to chase me out. On February 14, I was at the centre early. I heard that Onwenu, in company with her security personnel, had forced my shop open. I ran there and saw her supervising the forceful ejection without any prior court or police order,” Adesipe stated in the petition.

According to Punch, she got a letter to vacate the premises within three days on January 28, 2014, adding that another letter was served on her on February 4, in which the centre threatened to go to court.

She explained that she wrote a letter to Onwenu on February 6, and sent her a text message three days later seeking an audience. She said the DG gave her an appointment for the following day.

Mrs Adesipe said she had earlier met other members of the management team at Onwenu’s office and after she narrated her story, Madam Onwenu, who is now showing herself as big woman because of an appointment, had apologised to her and told her a formal apology letter would be written by the centre to her.

She added that Onwenu said she should vacate the shop and promised that she would be relocated to the shopping complex within the premises. Mrs Adesipe said she would vacate as soon as a shop she gets an allocation letter.

Back to her assault: She said that she took pictures of the scene of the incident with her phone but Onwenu immediately directed that her phone be confiscated. She said in the struggle for the phone, she was beaten and dragged on the ground, while her cloth and bags were torn.