"They made me sit down and watch my mom pass away before my eyes. I doubt if I will ever be normal again after this. I hate this country.”
A Twitter user, Ben Peterside, has narrated how policemen at a checkpoint in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, caused the death of his mother on Friday morning.
According to Peterside, the policemen stopped him from taking his mother to hospital after he failed to give them a bribe of N20,000 for driving within the city during the lockdown order in place to curb the spread of Coronavirus in the state.
The young man disclosed that his mother had been living with hypertension for over 20 years and that he was taking her for urgent medical care when the callousness of the policemen caused her death.
In a post on his Twitter handle, Peterside said, “This morning, my mom who had been managing hypertension for over 20 years passed away right in the car while I was taking her to the hospital simply because men of @policeNG insisted that I have to part with N20,000 before they let us pass.
“I am in pains right now. I have now become an orphan all because of this lockdown.
"My mother would not have died if we had arrived at the hospital early enough. I even offered to make a transfer, these officers refused, they said they will be traced, they need cash.
“So after pleading with them for over an hour, these heartless officers refused us to move.
"They made me sit down and watch my mom pass away before my eyes. I doubt if I will ever be normal again after this. I hate this country.”
Shortly after making the post on Twitter, Peterside removed it after being contacted by the police leadership in the state, SaharaReporters gathered.
Not too long after that period, his Twitter account was completely deactivated.
A friend of Peter later hinted that he had been under immense pressure from the police since posting the sad experience on Twitter, forcing him to exit the popular social networking platform.
SaharaReporters also gathered that the young man had been warned not to talk about the incident on social media again by senior police officers in the state.
When contacted by SaharaReporters on Saturday, spokesperson for the police in Rivers State, Nnamdi Omoni, said he was not aware of the incident.
He said, “I don’t have any information about the incident.
"Which checkpoint did he say it happened?
"If the guy is sure, give me his number so that I can call him to give more information about the incident."