Six police officers have been called to the Lagos State Police Command’s headquarters in Ikeja in connection with an alleged attempt to extort N100,000 from a member of the public.
This was confirmed by Benjamin Hundeyin, the command’s spokesman, to the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday.
“Six policemen are involved in the matter. They have been summoned to the headquarters in Ikeja for interrogation. The money involved has been collected back for the owner,” he said.
On Thursday, a member of the public, simply identified as Oluwagbadura, on his verified Twitter handle, alleged that some policemen extorted him.
According to him, some police officers stopped him at Soliki, Aguda, Lagos at 2:45 p.m. and searched him as normal.
Oluwagbadura claimed that the officers led him to a POS at at 3:44 p.m. and took N100,000 of his “hard-earned money.”
He said, “After the search and not finding anything on me, they proceeded to seize my phone and company laptop and tagged me a yahoo boy.
“My crime, they said, is that I do not have an ID card as a freelancer.nThey searched my phone. They called me a criminal for chatting with my friends on WhatsApp.
“They threatened to shoot and lock me up! Next, they took me to their station, just few meters away, then forced me to admit to being a criminal.”
Oluwagbadura added that the police requested him to write a statement and that he afterwards signed the necessary paperwork to post bail after continuing to deny having committed any crimes.
“I transferred N100,000 to the POS vendor, and then paid N2,000 for charges (which was screenshot.)”.
He said that there were six officers, and one of them threatened to deal with him in cell and nothing would happen.
He said some of them were in mufti, including the one who acted as their leader.
“All of these things happened at the Police divisional headquarters, Soliki Aguda. I need Justice and my money back, please,” he tweeted.
The complaint was tweeted at about 7.46 p.m. and at 10.36 p.m., Oluwagbadura tweeted again to thank all that helped to broadcast his complaints.
“Update: First, thanks to everyone who contributed a tweet. I got my money back completely.
“Special thanks to @SavvyRinu, @BenHundeyin (the spokesman for police in Lagos), @segalink and the DPO, who was pretty nice,” he said.
