By Joe Akwarandu, Umuahia
Abia state-based journalist, Mr Don-Norman Obinna, has been remanded in prison following his arrest by police operatives last Friday in Umuahia, Abia state capital.
Orient Daily gathered that Obinna, a former deputy editor with the New Telegraph newspaper and currently the publisher of an online news platform, Realmnews, was arrested by the policemen as he left the studios of a private radio station, after granting a special interview which was transmitted simultaneously on four other radio stations across the state.
The former media aide to Senator Theodore Orji, the senator representing the Abia central senatorial district, and who has since turned against the senator since he left his services, was once declared wanted by the Abia state police command for reportedly blackmailing the senator. However, he later got an injunction from a court in the state restraining the police from arresting him.
According to sources from the private radio station, the policemen numbering about four besieged the premises of the radio station in an ambush for Obinna. The source said that the cops who came to the station in a branded saloon car, stationed their men in the station’s reception office, while some climbed up to the studio’s door to lay in wait for Obinna.
The source added that the waiting police officers arrested and whisked away Obinna the moment he stepped out of the studio.
Efforts to contact the police public relations officer in the state, Geoffrey Ogbonna, were not successful as he did not respond to calls put across to his mobile phone line, but a source from Obinna’s family told our correspondent that he was arraigned before a state High Court in Umuahia, adding that the presiding judge directed that he should be remanded in prison.
