Chibuisi Innocent, an entrepreneur, has accused officers attached to the Area E Police Station in Festac, Lagos, of assaulting and extorting N180,000 from him.

On Friday, Innocent hopped on a bike at Second Rainbow Bus Stop. He had not left the area when police officers stopped him and requested that he hand over his bag for a search. The time was 11 am.

“When they could not find anything incriminating in my bag, one of the officers asked me to give my phone up for a search. As a law-abiding citizen, I did not hesitate,” Innocent told FIJ.

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“But I was shocked by their next line of action. The officer with my phone began to ask me about the identity of a white person he saw on the phone. I had not explained when they forced me into their shuttle.”

At the police station, one of the officers accessed his messaging app and reviewed all the photographs on his phone. From his credit and debit alerts, he got an idea of Innocent’s worth and asked him to pay N300,000 to be free.

READ ALSO: SARS Officials ‘Harass, Beat Up Young Man in Festac After Searching His Phone’

“After some negotiation, they agreed to collect N180,000 from me. They took me to a nearby POS shop close to their office, where I transferred to the vendor. But it did not end there,” he said.

The officers did not let Innocent go, but took him to the police station where he was forced to write that he was an internet fraudster and cultist.

As a graduate of Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Innocent still had the pictures of bullets fired at students of TASUED by soldiers two months earlier on his phone. The photos, according to him, were what the police used as their evidence of him being a cultist.

“When I got out of their station, I checked my phone, but did not find any photos of white people. I then checked Google Play Store and I saw they had checked for Hangouts, an app internet fraudsters use,” he said.

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“It was the displayed pictures under the app before you download it that the officers used against me. An app I have never used before, they used the pictures Google put themselves against me.”

FIJ made several calls to CSP Adekunle Ajisebutu, Lagos State Police spokesperson, but he did not answer them. At press time, he had not responded to a text sent to him.