Published 7th May, 2022

By Emmanuel Uti

Sunday John, a motorcycle repairman in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, has complained about how police officers from Igbeba Police Station consistently visit his workshop to harass and extort money from him.

John told FIJ that the police officers have continued to make life difficult for him by always compelling him to give them money whenever they come to his shop.

According to the repairman, the policemen visited his shop once again on Friday to demand money from him.

“When they started disturbing me, I would give them up to N5,000. But as their visits became frequent, I could no longer afford it,” John told FIJ.

“Failure to give them money has become a crime. They often beat me when I offered them N2,000. They would ask me if I thought they were beggars.”

He stated that the officers usually told him they would ‘set him up’ by levelling false allegations against him if he failed to give them up to N5,000 per visit.

“The officers have told me that if I do not give them the amount they want, they will continue to make life unbearable for me,” he said.

“They would always say they would put incriminating evidence in my shop and arrest me if I failed to dance to their tune.

“There are times they would enter my shop and seize whatever they find fascinating. Whenever I dismantled my customers’ bikes to repair them, the police would come and take the parts away without letting me assemble them back.”

John said a journalist from FIJ once contacted the police on his behalf. After the intervention, he claimed that the policemen stopped harassing him.

“They started harassing me again in March. In April, I gave them the last N500 I had on me but they rejected it, saying they would make sure I see hell,” the mechanic said.

“They said they would ‘show me pepper’. I have been in this shop since 2018 but nothing of such happened until last year. The landlord also said he does not know why I am being constantly harassed and extorted by the officers. He has however refused to wade into the matter. He said it was not his business.”

When FIJ called Abimbola Oyeyemi, the Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), he refused to comment on the issue.

“How many times are you going to ask me in respect of that issue? You’ve asked me not once, not twice, not three times. I am not commenting on it,” he said.

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