By Okechukwu Nwanguma
There is an aspect of the continuing case involving Timothy Chika Odoh (Chika Onwa Odo) that deserves public attention.
RULAAC has received allegations pointing to a disturbing pattern: similar or related complaints being taken to different police formations, followed by repeated arrests, invitations, searches and seizures affecting Chika, his workers, his family and his business.
At the centre of Chika’s account is Mr Uche Ozoigwe, whom he identifies as a security manager associated with ATC Telecommunications, the telecommunications infrastructure company whose equipment is alleged to have been vandalised or stolen.
According to Chika, Mr Ozoigwe has repeatedly featured, directly or indirectly, in complaints concerning telecommunications batteries and other equipment in which Chika trades.
Chika says this did not begin with the current FCID Annex Alagbon investigation. He alleges that during an earlier dispute in 2025, Mr Ozoigwe caused his arrest through Zone 2 Command over claims that batteries in his possession belonged to ATC Telecommunications. Chika was eventually charged in court.
Chika further alleges that Mr Ozoigwe threatened that he would ensure that he was sent to prison, driven out of the battery business and rendered jobless and poor.
That allegation is serious. RULAAC does not present it as a fact. We have asked the Inspector-General of Police to investigate and determine whether the subsequent sequence of events bears any relationship to the alleged threat.
And the sequence deserves scrutiny.
Since then, Chika and persons connected with him have faced police actions involving Zone 2 Command, FCID Annex Alagbon and officers under the Lagos State Police Command.
His workers have been arrested. Commercial goods have been seized. Suspects arrested at his business premises have been publicly paraded. His wife, Mrs Ogechi Juliet Chika, was subsequently arrested when Chika was reportedly not at home and was released following intervention at the level of the Lagos State Commissioner of Police. His vehicle was also reportedly taken.
Now another Zone 2 invitation requires Chika to report over allegations of conspiracy, stealing, threat to life and conduct likely to cause breach of peace.
This raises a question that can no longer be avoided:
Are these genuinely separate criminal complaints arising from different incidents and supported by independent evidence, or are substantially related allegations being repeatedly taken before different police formations, creating an endless police manhunt whose cumulative effect is to exhaust Chika financially, disrupt his business and ultimately destroy his livelihood?
A complainant—including ATC Telecommunications or any of its officials—has every right to report suspected theft or vandalism. The Police equally have a duty to investigate credible allegations.
But those legitimate rights cannot become a licence for forum-shopping through police formations or policing by attrition.
If Chika possesses batteries or telecommunications equipment stolen from ATC Telecommunications or any other company, that should be capable of proof. Let the particular items be identified by serial numbers and matched against ATC’s asset registers. Let investigators identify the specific telecommunications sites from which they were stolen, when the vandalism occurred and how the recovered items are connected to those incidents.
Equally, investigators should determine whether any of the equipment had previously been decommissioned, auctioned, sold or otherwise lawfully entered the secondary market. Chika should produce whatever purchase, supplier and payment records are available to explain his possession of the goods.
Evidence should settle the matter—not an endless succession of arrests.
Particularly troubling is the arrest of Chika’s wife. A person’s spouse cannot lawfully become a substitute for him. If Mrs Chika committed an offence, the evidence against her personally should be identified and investigated. If there was no such evidence, the circumstances of her arrest require an explanation.
This is why RULAAC has asked the Inspector-General of Police to call up all the files and put them on one table: the 2025 Zone 2 case, the current FCID Annex Alagbon investigation, the subsequent Lagos police actions and the latest Zone 2 complaint.
An independent investigation should establish Mr Ozoigwe’s precise role in each complaint involving Chika and ATC Telecommunications; whether he personally initiated, facilitated or coordinated any of them; whether the different complaints concern genuinely separate criminal incidents; and whether there is evidence supporting Chika’s allegation that the succession of police actions represents the fulfilment of an earlier threat to imprison him and destroy his livelihood.
We repeat: these allegations against Mr Ozoigwe must be investigated, not assumed to be true.
But neither should the pattern be ignored.
Let all the files come onto one table.
Let ATC Telecommunications and any other complainant produce the evidence supporting ownership of the disputed equipment. Let Chika account for the goods found in his possession. Let the Police establish which property relates to which reported crime.
And let an independent investigation determine whether different police formations are investigating genuinely separate crimes—or whether the coercive machinery of the State is being repeatedly invoked in substantially the same dispute, with the cumulative effect of financially exhausting a businessman, crippling his enterprise and keeping him permanently under police pursuit.
That is the question the Inspector-General of Police now needs to resolve urgently.
Mr Okechukwu Nwanguma is the Executive Director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC)
