How Ladipo Market Chairman, Chief Chukwuma Onyebinanma Was Arrested & Moved To Abuja 

P.M.EXPRESS reports that the Inspector General of Police has ordered for an investigation over allegations of using arms to cause violence, harassment and intimidation of traders, who he perceived as opponents in the market.

Thus, Chief Onyebinanma was arrested following the order of the IGP by the IRT team led by Mr. Sanusi in Lagos and subsequently moved to the Force Headquarters in Abuja for interrogation over his alleged conduct.

Unknown to Ikukuoma, the Police intelligence from IRT Abuja had monitored him for several days and confirmed the allegations of his executives empowering his task force team with arms such as knives and cutlasses and consequently arrested and detained him at the Lagos State Police Command.

While the Police team was about to fly him to Abuja, he became shivery, developed serious health challenges and he was allowed to go home for treatment before he went to Abuja over the allegations by some traders.

According to some of the traders,  Ikukuoma destroyed his good will when he took over and became unpopular in the market. He wanted to contest for second tenure and have realized that he may likely lose in the coming election.

He was alleged to have resorted to intimidating and harassing known opponents and introduced the use of fresh ID, which he used to disenfranchise his opponents.

Following the alleged threat of violence,  intimidation and harassment, the group led by Chief Kelechi Oputa, popularly known as Baba KC, wrote the petition and Chief Onyebinanma was arrested.

The real challenge for Ikukuoma now is that the complainants in their petition insisted that he should be charged before Court based on the overwhelming evidence against him and he is seeking the assistance of the market’s BOT to rescue him and persuade the complainants to make peace.

This was confirmed by Onyebinanma, who however, denied all the allegations but what he was unable to deny was the use of arms such cutlasses by his task force and preventing known members of the association from attending meetings.

Narrating what happened, Chief Ikukuoma stated:

“In February, 2024, I had already  informed the members last year that every monthly meetings as a rule – will be paying your dues and obtaining your ID card and all gates will be closed. You either show your ID card and your receipt otherwise you will not be able to participate in the meetings. We continued to close the gate to defaulters every other month after February except for June when we didn’t hold meeting”.

“On July 18th when I was about to preside over our monthly meeting, I got a call informing me that some people held a meeting and they were coming to disrupt my meeting with thugs and cultists. I called my task force chairman to explain the matter and insisted that nobody without their ID cards should be allowed to attend the meeting. Later people with machetes, daggers started coming out from everywhere. Members of my task force protected the market by carrying their knives and cutlasses to chase them away. Not knowing this was all planned, they snapped them with the knives when they were chasing the thugs. After everything, they wrote a petition to IRT Abuja, and Police in Surulere. They came to my house to arrest me. We went to the headquarters at Ikeja and in 2 days I was asked to come to Abuja. I debunked their allegations and explained why I introduced the use of ID cards, which was for security reasons.”

However, some of the traders who spoke to P.M.EXPRESS said he introduced the ID cards for the election and Chief Kelechi Oputa is a very popular in the market and has planned using it to disenfranchise his supporters, which he denied.

Efforts to reach Chief Oputa was not successful. But It was gathered that he has top critical stakeholders in the market supporting him including the two former President Generals of Ladipo Market, Uchenna Eze a.k.a Baba Ido, Izuchukwu Ikeuba, Lotanna Okafor,  Casmir Ulasi, among others.