Olude Adetunji, a 25-year-old guitarist, has revealed how some policemen attached to Area ‘E’ Command, Festac, Lagos, extorted N15,000 from him for resisting them from searching his phone.
Adetunji
spoke to Vanguard on the matter and gave a detailed account of the events that
led to the alleged extortion.
According to Adetunji, he was stopped by the
police while he was on his way to his friend's house on 711 Road in Festac. The
police proceeded to search him and found nothing incriminating. However, they
then requested to search his phone, which he refused, citing the
Inspector-General of Police's directive against it.
Adetunji claims that he was delayed for four
hours and that eight policemen followed him to a Point of Sales (POS) machine,
where he was forced to contact his friends and ask for N10,000 to make up a
total of N15,500 which he was then forced to withdraw for the officers.
“On March 24, 2023, I took a motorbike from
First Gate to my friend’s place at 711 Festac. We had not even gone far before
some police officers stopped the motorbike in front of the Festac police station.
The time was 9 am.
“They threw so many questions at me, and I
answered them accordingly. Then they searched my bag and my pocket and found
nothing. I just had my sketchbook and Bluetooth speaker in my bag. After that,
one of them tossed my bag to another officer and told me to meet the other
officer for further search. I reluctantly answered the second officer as I knew
they were probably up to something.
“The second officer also searched me but
found nothing. Then he told me to open my phone and I said “Sir this is not
right. The IGP has kicked against it. After that statement, they started
dragging and beating me to enter their shuttle. I struggled for a few seconds
but nobody was there to hear me out because it was at the front of the police
station. They drove into the police station afterwards and started threatening
me.
“At the time they were dragging me, I asked
what my offence was, one of them claimed to have sustained an injury on his arm
during the struggle. He said he was going to take me to court. They told me to
pay N200,000 for assaulting a police officer in uniform. I was surprised
because how will one person assault over eight policemen?
“I had just N7,000 in my account. After all
the threats, I had to call a friend of mine to send me 10,000. So they took me
to the front of the police station where I transferred the N15,500 to a POS
Operator before they left me. This was after keeping me with for four hours.”
The residents of Festac have reportedly
complained about extortion and harassment by the police, who continue to ignore
the directives given by the Police High Command prohibiting phone searches.
When contacted, the Lagos State Police
spokesman, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, claimed not to be aware of the matter.
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