Some unidentified officials of Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area (LGA) of Lagos State, yesterday, harassed a corps member serving with The Guardian, Daniel Nnanna, while trying to interview some women protesters at the LGA secretariat over lack of basic amenities.

Narrating his ordeal, the corps member said his mobile phone was confiscated while recording the complaints of the women, with one of the officials hitting him from behind, and snatched his mobile phone and handed it over to the Local Government Inspector of the NYSC, who did not return the phone to the corps member until after six hours, on the instruction of the LGA officials.

Nnanna was also forced by the LGA officials to delete the recordings after hours of delay.

He said: “When I went for my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) monthly clearance at the premises of Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area (LGA) secretariat, I saw a group of protesters, all of them were women and probably residents of that area. They chanted ‘No light, no vote,’ ‘no transformer, no vote.’ They were women who had not got power and water supply for a couple of weeks or months. Reaching out for my cell phone, I rushed to the scene to record their complaints.”

The protesting women insisted they wanted to see the chairman, but one of the officials said, “The chairman is not around. Please women, I am sorry for the inconvenience; you have to put your complaints in writing so that when he comes he will get your message.”

Feeling that their complaints would not get to the chairman, the women refused to leave, and still insisted on meeting the chairman directly.

“I approached one of the women and tried to ask her a few questions to identify where they were coming from, why they have chosen to protest here at the LGA instead of the power distribution company (DISCO) and how long they have been facing the power outage.”

At this point, one of the officials spotted the corps member while interviewing some of the protesters. He raised the alarm and other officials came by, harassed him, snatched his cell phone and delayed him for hours. This prevented the corps members from performing his statutory duty of reporting, and made him sustain injury as a result of the physical assault.