The four men were on Wednesday arrested by the Surulere Police Division in Lagos state for allegedly ‘eating late outside’
The policemen, who swooped on them while they were eating noodles
at a shop on Ogunlana Drive around 11pm under the Ojuelegba Bridge in
the Surulere area, were said to have accused the men of 'eating late'
and queried why they did not eat in their houses.
The policemen, numbering eight reportedly brought three vans and
rounded them up and subsequently whisked them away to the Area C
Command, Surulere.
According to Punch, the policemen at the counter allegedly demanded
N15, 000 ‘settlement’ from the men, threatening that they would sleep
in the cell overnight if they failed to settle.
One of the suspects, Sango Svengali and the others, yet to be
identified, were not made to write any statement at the station. They,
however, allegedly offered N5, 000 but the policemen refused.
On Thursday, the suspects were brought before the area commander,
who noted that they resembled Boko Haram members, ordering them to shave
their beards.
Svengali, after regaining his freedom, said the policemen did not
ask any of them for identification before forcing them into their vans.
According to him, “I had a stressful day at work on Wednesday.
There was a lot of traffic. Instead of going home through the Third
Mainland Bridge, I decided to spend the night at a friend’s place in
Ojuelegba. Some other friends came to my friend’s place.
“Later, around 11pm, we were hungry and we decided to go down
the road to buy noodles. The Mai shai are basically night-food people.
So we knew they would still be selling food.
“We drove to Ogunlana Drive and saw a woman selling noodles by
the roadside. The three of us decided to buy noodles and eat. We sat on
the trunk of the two cars we brought and ate the food. As we were about
to go, three police vans stopped by our vehicles. They were about eight
policemen in the vans.
“The policemen dragged me into one of their vans. I was
confused and wanted to resist. But when I saw the young man selling
recharge cards beside the woman being slapped several times, I knew it
was useless resisting.
“The policemen did not ask us any question. They did not ask us to identify ourselves.
“While in the van, the policemen sitting beside me collected my
phone and started searching through it. He checked through my
electronic mail, and when he did not find anything, he said, ‘Sometimes
you go dey pray say you no dey road when devil dey pass,’ he added that
we would ‘sort it out’ at the station.
“As we moved on, I noticed that my other friends – except one –
were in the other vans. When we got to the station, we found that eight
people had been picked up too. The policemen at the station said, ‘Why
una no chop for house?’ One of my friends started negotiating for us at
the counter.
“The policemen said they wanted N15, 000 to let three of us go. He were begging them to take N5, 000. They refused.
“The cell stank like a gutter. There were about 18 of us there.
We endured the stench till morning. When it was around 7am, we were
brought before the area commander. We were lined up like criminals. He
said our misdeed was that we ate at an unholy hour. He said we looked
like fanatics and Boko Haram members.
“He ordered them to lock us up again. After some time, some of
our friends came, one of them is a lawyer. He spoke to the area
commander. He said the only way to release us was to shave our beards.
The police bought shaving sticks and made us shave at the counter.
“I was so embarrassed. All this while, we never wrote any
statement. We were not accused of anything. When I finally left, it was
some minutes before 10am.”
Meanwhile, one of the unidentified suspects reportedly communicated
with the Complaints Response Unit, CRU, Force Headquarters, Abuja,
through Twitter, to report the alleged bribe the policemen demanded.
Responding to the complaint on Twitter, the Head of the CRU, CSP
Abayomi Shogunle, said a team of policemen had gone to the police
station to ascertain the claim of the complainants.
He tweeted, “A special monitoring team from the Force
Headquarters on nationwide patrol is at the police station in Ojuelegba
to verify this report.
“The complaint is acknowledged and the tracking number is CRU 359117.”
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