Judiciary sources have informed www.calitown.com that this past Tuesday, the Cross River State Commissioner of Commerce and Industry, Peter Egba and his driver, violently attacked and disrupted proceedings of the mobile court constituted by the Cross River State Judiciary to try road traffic offenders.
The mobile court, presided over by a magistrate, Dorathy Duke, was in session on the Murtala Muhammed highway, close to the Zone 6 Police headquarters, when the commissioner’s wife was flagged down by Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, officials performing checks on vehicles plying the route. Egba’s wife is believed to have come short on traffic and vehicular requirements, prompting her booking and being charged to appear before the mobile court, sitting just a few metres away from where she was arrested. Her pleas to be left off the hook were ignored by the FRSC officials who insisted that she had violated traffic regulations.
Desperate phone calls from the woman to her husband, saw the Commissioner appear in person, insisting thereafter that his wife be let off on personal recognition, something the FRSC officials and the sitting magistrate refused to do. It was further revealed that the refusal to let his wife off the hook, enraged the Commissioner who flew into a rage. Video evidence in the custody of the FRSC Intelligence Officer who was at the scene of the incident, show the Commissioner ordering his driver to attack the official and lots more. We also gathered that his wife, emboldened by her husband’s actions, approached the female magistrate, raving, ranting and poured invectives on her.
When www.calitown.com spoke with Egba, he stoutly maintained that the FRSC officials arrested his car and left his little son, coming back from school under the sun crying. He claims to have been civil in expressing anger that the FRSC officials who are fathers themselves could keep an infant, on his way back from school, under the sun, hungry and crying. He also added that “unless the video has been edited, if they have not edited it, you would see the point where I had to pick up a stone as five FRSC officials menacingly approached me. I had to defend myself from the attack”, he concluded.
Meanwhile, top CRS Judiciary sources also informed www.calitown.com that the CRS Chief Judge, Okoi Ikpi Itam, has been briefed on the matter and may direct that the matter be charged to court to deter a few others from embracing this kind of behaviour.