The Lagos police command has summoned six police officers to its headquarters in Ikeja over the extortion of N100,000 from a civilian.
The command’s spokesman, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, disclosed this 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 Lagos resident, known only as Oluwagbadura, on his verified Twitter handle, accused some policemen of extorting him.
He claimed that around 2:45 p.m., the cops stopped him at Soliki, Aguda and conducted the usual search on him.
Mr Oluwagbadura alleged that at about 3:44 p.m., the officers escorted him to a POS and forced him to withdraw N100,000.
“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,” he explained. “They 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.”
Mr Oluwagbadura said he refused to admit to committing any crime, stressing that the officers then asked him to write a statement and sign papers to bail himself.
“I transferred N100,000 to the POS vendor, and then paid N2,000 for charges (which was screenshot),” he tweeted.
He added, “All of these things happened at the police divisional headquarters, Soliki Aguda. I need justice and my money back, please.”
The complaint was tweeted at about 7:46 p.m.
At 10:36 p.m., Mr Oluwagbadura provided an update.
“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.
