Abia State Harmonized Task Force, ASHTF, and rights activist, Chinedu Obilor have engaged in a war of words following the man-handling of a truck driver in Umuahia, Abia State capital.
Obilor, who is also a content creator, recently shared a video where the men of the ASHTF were dragging and punching a truck driver, before pushing him into their waiting operational bus, for causing road obstruction.
He said that the struggle for the control of the heavy-duty truck caused it to crash into the fence of a building along Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road.
But in an official reaction, the Abia State Harmonized Task Force said that the long vehicle carrying cement was abandoned on Olokoro road for three consecutive days, causing serious obstruction to road users and posing a potential danger to lives and property.
According to Miracle Chukwunenye, spokesperson of the agency, residents in the area alerted the relevant zonal office of the ASHTF about the obstruction, and it dispatched its operatives to go and remove the obstruction.
“During the towing operation, while along Ikot Ekpene Road by Finbers, the towing chain snapped and the heavy-duty truck rolled back, colliding with a nearby fence.
“This was an accident that occurred in the course of efforts to move the truck off the road,” said Chukwunenye.
He noted that some bags of cement were offloaded into another truck provided by the same company that owned the broken-down vehicle, to make the towing very easy.
Chukwunenye, who described the videos shared by Obilor as falsehood , alleged that the driver of the broken down vehicle mobilized two individuals to harass the personnel of the Task Force and attempted to damage the device used in recording the evacuation exercise.
The spokesperson, however, did not confirm or deny if the truck driver was assaulted and taken away by his men, but said that failures by any driver to evacuate his broken down vehicle from the road after 24 hours attracts sanctions.
