Emmanuel Ejeh, chairman of Fatima Gold Estate, Karu, Nasarawa State, has accused a high-ranking officer, Major-General Olusegun Adeniyi of the Nigerian Army, of mobilising his orderlies to assault him for notifying his wife’s hotel of a planned disconnection from the estate’s overloaded transformer.

“This is to inform us that one Major General Adeniyi of Top Rock Garden assaulted me this morning at entrance of our gate over the Notice of disconnection of their Premises from our Transformer,” an emergency security notice shared with landlords and residents of the estate said.

“As I was trying to explain to him, he didn’t allow me to talk and the next (sic) I saw was slaps and punches on me to the full glare of our security, residents and bystanders. It took the grace of God and pleas from people to disuade him from inflicting serious injury on me,” Mr Ejeh asserted.

A notice of disconnection was sent to Top Garden on January 25, informing the hotel owner that the transformer, meant for residential buildings, could no longer cope with the extra load of powering the hotel located outside the estate.

Peoples Gazette learnt that the transformer got faulty last October and cost N1.7 million to repair, prompting technicians to recommend that extra load be taken off it to avert a total breakdown.

The association then advised Top Garden to find an alternative power source “to forestall total breakdown of our transformer.”

Mr Adeniyi replied to the notice saying, “the excuse that the load at her(wife’s) business premise is much, is not very true.”

He requested that the hotel be given eight months to source for another transformer and asked to see Mr Ejeh in person on Thursday.

Despite seeing Mr Ejeh – who had undergone a femur surgery last year – standing with the aid of crutches, the army general alongside his orderlies reportedly rained punches and slaps on him. His eyeglasses were also seized during the assault.

The chairman asserted that other orderlies strategically positioned around the vicinity confiscated the mobile phones of bystanders who tried to record the assault.

Since the Thursday assault, Mr Ejeh left Fatima Gold Estate for safety concerns, but he has been informed that Mr Adeniyi had come to the estate gate more than three times with several uniformed officers both police and military men, with threats to arrest him.

The general’s anger, according to a letter he sent on January 26, was based on an alleged “curse”, the chairman made against him.

“Again, I say it unambiguously that the Chairman, Fatima Gold management uttered a curse on me and I intend to make him face the consequences of his utterances in every way possible,” threatened the army chief.

The Nigerian Army did not immediately reply to texts seeking comments on the allegations that saw Mr Adeniyi run foul of the Nigerian law; abuse of human rights and violation of the army’s code of conduct.

Checks by Peoples Gazette showed the army general’s wife businesses, Top Rock Garden and Quincy Empire Complex, were not registered with the nation’s Corporate Affairs Commission and may have been evading tax.

Mr Adeniyi is not a stranger to flouting the army rules. He was demoted in December 2020 after being convicted by a court martial for violating sections of the officers’ use of social media.