No fewer than fifteen officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) broke into a multi-tenanted apartment around 1:30 am in Mandate Ogor Street, behind the Centre for Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies, Ilorin, Kwara State, on Thursday.

One of the occupants told FIJ that operatives of the EFCC jumped over the barb-wired fence into the apartment at about 1:30 am, barging and breaking into homes.

“At about 1:30 am, I heard someone screaming, ‘open the door’, while the door was being heavily hit at the same time. The apartment has five two-bedroom flats and two self-contained rooms. They were barging into four rooms at the same time. When I woke up, I unbound my window. At the apartment opposite mine, I saw the EFCC officials in their red jackets. Not long after, they came to my door. I told them to give me some minutes to open them the door, but they never listened. They were too impatient, so they forced their way into my room. They were like, ‘Where is my phone?’

“I asked one of them why they came to the house in the middle of the night. They jumped over the fence and started barging into people’s homes. My wife was telling me to please come inside because they were fully armed. They were pointing a gun at us. Some of them were even using the face mask, so I couldn’t identify them. One of our neighbours, with his car, was taken away. They claimed he was a ‘Yahoo boy’.

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“In the morning, I went to their office. When I got to their office, I was arrogantly told by the EFCC officials that that was how they carried out their operation, that they had raided so many houses in Ilorin. I left the place so embarrassingly. Why should the average Nigerian trying to make ends meet face problems during the day and still face problems at night when he’s trying to rest, when everybody is at a weak state? I actually took my wife to the clinic around 2:30 am when they left, because she was developing high blood pressure.”

Another occupant, who is a staff member of Sobi 101.9 FM, Ilorin, stated that she had visited her mother when the incident happened.

She told FIJ that her home door was damaged and the officials entered her room searching and rummaging everywhere.

“We have about seven apartments in that compound. They barged into each apartment. My house is the first to the right. They forcefully entered my room. From what I saw when I got there, they broke into my room with a stone and searched and walked everywhere, probably they thought I was hiding or something,” she said.

“They jumped the fence. The sign is still on the wall of the fence. Probably they used their shoes to press the barb wires to have their way inside the compound.”

A receptionist at the Ilorin EFCC command confirmed the incident to FIJ.

“I know they went to arrest, but I don’t know what happened there because I was not among the operatives that went for the operation,” he said.