The officers attached to the Mapo Police Station in Ibadan, Oyo State, have been illegally detaining Odumuyiwa Oladimeji, a food products driver, since Friday evening after he declined to pay them bribes, FIJ can report.

Unknown to the police, FIJ was aware that the space wagon driven by Oladimeji broke down and was being towed away by a van when the police arrested the drivers of both vehicles and demanded a bribe of N20,000 each from them. They released the towing van the following day when the real owner turned up at the station and they found him to be influential, but they held on to Oladimeji because of his bosses’ refusal to ‘cooperate’. The Police subsequently came up spurious claims about the expiry dates of the food products in Oladimeji’s vehicle.

Olamide Ayeni, co-owner of Broad Foods, a food packaging company, told FIJ that one of her customers resident in the United Kingdom called her on Saturday morning to inform her that the police in Ibadan arrested her driver with her goods on Friday evening.

While she wondered what could have gone wrong, the police called her husband on Saturday morning to inform him that they had a man who had stolen their goods with them.

Ayeni’s husband told the police officers that the man with them did not steal the goods, as one of their customers sent him to take the goods to her house in Ibadan.

Ayeni said the police called minutes later, asking why Broad Food used stickers to show the production and expiry dates of their products.

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“This was when I came in. I told the officer that we used stickers at some point, but we had discontinued them,” Ayeni told FIJ.

The client bought the products seen by the Police more than six months ago. Perhaps the client did not sell them all and decided to move them from her store in Abeokuta to her house in Ibadan.”

Ayeni said she called Adewale Osifeso, Oyo State Police Public Relations Officer, to inform him of the situation. She told him that it was unfair how the police kept the driver in their cell, seized his phone, and forced him to write a statement under pressure.

“The police called later after I had called their PPRO. They said that some products in the driver’s vehicle had expired.

“I told them I had the receipt that showed the woman bought it six months ago. I told them the driver had done nothing because the goods were in his car and he was not selling them.

“The police said they would call a press conference to prove that the driver had expired products. Yet, 24 hours after they arrested him, they held him in their custody. They are not letting him communicate with people. I do not know what they want to do with him. If they find him guilty, they should take him to court, not keep him in their custody.”

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Ayeni said the customer who asked the driver to take the goods to Ibadan sent her brother to the police station to give them N2,000 in the afternoon. She said her customer’s brother even promised the police N10,000, but they refused because they wanted something more.

“The police did not give me the right to sell food, so why are they acting this way? They are now saying the products are fake. They are not getting in touch with us. And they arrested him at 8 pm on Friday in Ibadan,” she said.

Ayeni said she sent a lawyer on Sunday to check on the driver at the station. The lawyer did not see the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), but officers who were present told him that the driver was arrested because he was moving late at night.

“The lawyer said an officer told him I made a wrong call by calling the PPRO. They told him the PPRO escalated the issue and moved it to Eleyele,” she told FIJ.

“They said our company was fake, but they did not reach out to us to verify if we were fake. They only held the guy and used him as bait to get us. Why? If they want proof, they should request our certificates.”

When FIJ called Adewale Osifeso, the Oyo State PPRO, he did not answer his calls. At press time, he had not responded to the text sent to him.