When employees perform remarkably, the natural expectation is that they get rewarded in some way. But sometimes, reality differs from expectations, and one commendable deed could cause a spiral of bad consequences.

This was the fate of Glorious Babatunde and Shola Akano, two detectives dismissed from the Kwara State Police Public Complaint Bureau (PCB) in July 2020 for commiting no other crime than busting a car theft network.

The PCB was an arm of the police set up by Ajayi Okasanmi, the Kwara Police Public Relations Officer, in 2017 to probe excesses of the police.

Ironically, the same Bureau dismissed its own members three years after, and Kayode Egbetokun, the newly appointed acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP), who was the state Commissioner of Police (CP) at the time, was later removed from office as CP.

FRAMED FOR EXTORTION

When FIJ investigated the circumstances that led to the dismissal of Babatunde and Akano, we found that both men were framed for extortion, and no proof was ever brought against them.

The police in the state relied on testimonies of arrested bank fraud suspects who claimed the two detectives extorted money from them in the premises of a Zenith Bank branch.

READ MORE: Two Policemen in Kwara Busted a Car Theft Ring. Their Reward? A Sack!

CCTV footage from this bank was never retrieved, and the bank manager told our reporter the police never approached them for it.

Babatunde and Akano were detained in March 2020, for 15 days before they were subsequently dismissed.

Akano maintained that their persecution was not in line with the allegation brought against them: extortion.

“The police also know we didn’t do what we were accused of,” he said at the time. “Some top officers just wanted to get us out of the way because of the Ajadi investigation we were doing. If they had allowed us to go on, we would have exposed a lot of our superiors covering Ajadi.”

Ajadi Habeeb was a car dealer Akano and Babatunde were investigating for his links to a car snatching ring. He was fingered by John Opagbile, a suspect who confessed to the police that Habeeb was their gang leader.

EGBETOKUN’S DISGUISED TRANSFER FROM CP TO ADMIN OFFICER

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A week after Babatunde and Akano’s dismissal had been filed, the PPRO sent them a Whatsapp voice note appealing to them to return to the Command to resolve the controversy, but the officers refused to, for fear of rearrest. 

Egbetokun Olukayode Adeolu, the then commissioner, was subsequently transferred to Lagos after their issue was escalated to the media. In what seemed like a punishment, Egbetokun became the Admin officer at the Nigeria Police Hospital at Falomo, Lagos state.

A source within the CID told FIJ back then that Egbetokun “shed tears when he received the petition by the dismissed officers over what transpired”.

“He regretted making that decision because he later found out the officers were not guilty,” the source said.

“The Police will not want to dismiss just the two officers so that it won’t raise suspicion, but their real intention was to punish only Glorious and Shola. The CID was not happy that the commissioner loved to refer many cases to these two because of their skills and zeal.”

Ojukwu is a reporter with FIJ in partnership with Report for the World, which matches local newsrooms with talented emerging journalists to report on under-covered issues around the globe.