Ex-SARS member and former police IPO Ugochukwu Ozoude aka Orthopaedic has been called out numerous times over severe cases of human rights violations linked to his name.
Ugochukwu Ozoude’s name was connected to several cases of police abuse during the time he served at Enugu SARS under the then OC, Jude Agbanejero (now late).
Some of the crimes Ugochukwu Ozoude, who is now a policy advisor with the United Nations, have been accused of include unlawful arrests, extreme forms of torture, prolonged detentions without trial and unexplained disappearance of victims.
It was Ugochukwu Ozoude’s highhandedness and notoriety for carrying out the worst forms of torture on detainees that earned him the nickname “Orthopaedic”. Many also refer to him as the “Torture Machine.”
Ugochukwu Ozoude was listed as one of the five culprits in a 2010 police abuse report jointly prepared by the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN) in collaboration, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the National Committee On Torture (NCOT).
The 2010 human rights violation report indicted Ugochukwu Ozoude alongside four others including the then Head of Enugu SARS, Mr Jude Agbanejero (now late), the former DPO Agbani police station, Supol A.T. Hussani and Mr Afam Nnaji alias Okity –Special Adviser to Enugu State Governor on Political Affairs of carrying out some of the worst cases of police abuse in the South-East region at that time.
A part of the police abuse report described some of the wicked acts Ugochukwu Ozoude aka Orthopaedic and his friends subjected one of their victims to.
One Nnachetam Anthony Nnamani was arrested and detained at Enugu SARS for FOUR whole months, during which time Ugochukwu Ozoude and his friends severely tortured him in the most inhumane way anyone can think of.
A section of the report which gave a brief account of the abuse reads:
“He was tied upside down and hung for hours. He was made to carry corpse of other suspects they had shot and killed, and told him someone else would shortly carry his own corpse. They used wire to flog his back, leaving bumpy scares. They made him roll on blood of other suspects they shot and killed at the station.”
Ugochukwu Ozoude was recently called out on social media by some Nigerians who had had an encounter with the dreaded Orthopaedic.
One of the Twitter users (@GhenhisKhan) reporting Ugochukwu Ozoude wrote that he “murdered countless people in Enugu” while working under his former OC – Jude Agbanejero who is late now.
