Rev Fr. Ejike Mbaka and members of his church reportedly assaulted two BBC staff members and their driver on Wednesday evening, in the southeastern state of Enugu.
BBC reports that the journalists, Chioma Obianinwa, Nnamdi Agbanelo and their driver, Ndubuisi Nwafor, were accompanied by a Catholic Priest, Rev Cajethan Obiekezie, who approached them to interview Mbaka.
When the BBC team arrived at the Adoration Ministry Church where Father Mbaka was delivering a sermon at around 10 am, they were unable to interview him.
He was escorted home by the media team at around 5 pm, accompanied by Rev. Obiekezie.
At that moment some 20 Mbaka close associates surrounded the reporters and their team at the entrance of the house waiting in a car after Obiekezie entered the house to inform him.
According to Obianinwa, “People confiscated their equipment and threatened to kill them for writing ‘bad news about Mbaka.”
They accused BBC News Igbo was writing bad news about Mbaka and started beating Nnamdi, Solomon and Ndubuisi.
A BBC correspondent goes on to say that Mbaka and Obiekezie came out of the house when they heard the noise, and Mbaka confronted her and started pointing at her calling her a ‘devil.’
“This fired up the men to continue the attacks as Father Mbaka continued shouting and abusing us. He asked his men to seize our phones and cameras. They said they would kill us and nothing would happen. They removed my wig and tried to strangle Nnamdi. Father Obiekezie was telling them to stop but they attacked him too and seized his phone,” she said.
Obianinwa said the attackers only stopped when she screamed that “the world will know that they were killed at Mbaka’s house.”
“At that time, Rev Mbaka asked us to leave before his men killed us. He demanded that they return our equipment to us and then chase us out of the compound. His men followed us until we left the state,” she said.
Rev Mbaka was yet to respond to the allegations in the report as at press time.
