Published 27th Dec, 2021

By Emmanuel Uti

Elochukwu Odigie, a student at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), has narrated how police officers attached to Adeniji Police Station extorted N50,000 from him and his friends following a wrongful arrest.

On Friday, Odigie and three of his friends, two men and a lady, were on an Uber ride around Chevron Bus Stop at about 10 pm when some police officers ordered their driver to park for a search.

The officers asked Odigie and his male friends to get off the car for a search. When the young men alighted, the officers searched them, but found nothing incriminating.

“An officer asked us to bring our phones. He told us that if he found nothing incriminating on them, he would return them. But as we handed our phones to him, he put them in his pocket,” Odigie told FIJ.

“When we asked why he put the phones in his pocket, he said the specialist to check the phone was on his way.”

Since the police officers did not seize the phone of the lady with Odigie, she began to record how the officers were treating her friends, but an officer saw her and seized her phone.

Another officer arrived soon, but he did not act like he had come to check phones. According to Odigie, he cocked his gun and ordered all of them, except their female friend, into the shuttle.

“One of my friends asked why we were asked to enter their vehicle, but the officer who cocked his gun at us slapped him and asked why he dared to ask questions. Afterwards, they drove us to their station,” he said.

When the young men got to the Adeniji Police Station, the officers dumped them in the cell, where some inmates welcomed them with beating.

Later, one of the police officers asked Odigie what he could offer to earn his freedom. He offered N20,000, but the officer refused. It then dawned on him that he and his friends would pass the night in the station.

By 9 am the following morning, an officer called the men out to write a report. While writing the report, another officer kept asking which cult group they identified with, but they ignored the question. When they were done, the policemen asked, one more time, what they would offer to regain freedom.

“I offered N20,000, but they rejected it. One officer said their police station was not a N20,000 type of police station. He stated that I should add to what I had offered,” he said.

“Due to what we experienced in the cell, my friends and I offered N50,000, and they reluctantly agreed. They took me outside to use a POS nearby, where I withdrew N50,000 and handed it to them,” he said.

After Odigie paid, the officers asked him and other victims to unlock their phones. “But for my female friend, when I unlocked her phone, the video she was trying to make when the officers were talking to us the previous day was what popped up. An officer slapped me for that and seized her phone, saying they would never release the phone,” he said.

While they allowed Odigie and his friends to go home, they threatened to deal with the lady who owned the phone.

FIJ made several calls to CSP Adekunle Ajidebutu, Lagos State police spokesperson, but he did not answer them. At press time, he had also not responded to a text message sent to him.

On Friday, FIJ reported how police officers attached to Adeniji Police Station extorted N405,000 from a UNILAG student after framing him with cultism.

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