Published 26th Dec, 2021

By Emmanuel Uti

On Monday, Temitope Peters, a teenager seeking entry into a tertiary institution, was heading to Oyingbo, Lagos, for a seminar when police officers attached to the Satellite Division Police Station in the Alakija area of the state arrested him.

Peters, who was on a commercial bus, said the police officers stopped the vehicle and asked all the young men to get off the vehicle. This was around 11 am.

“They arrested me and one other guy from the vehicle. We were told to enter their own van. They specifically stopped the bus I boarded and other buses because they wanted to extort young people,” Peters told FIJ.

After the arrest, the officers drove everyone they had arrested to their police station. According to Peters, they took all of them to a corner at the police station and searched their phones.

“They did not see anything that could implicate us on the phone. Then they asked that we pay them. I particularly did not want to, but the officers said they would level false allegations against me,” he said.

Peters said he succumbed to the officers’ unethical demand when their threats became too much. Seeing that he had accepted to bribe them, the officers provided an account number and he transferred N20,000 immediately.

“The officers are still there. They are still deliberately stopping buses to extort people,” he said.

FIJ attempted to speak with Adekunle Ajisebutu, Lagos State police spokesperson, on the phone, but his line was switched off. At press time, he had also not responded to a text sent to him.

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