Fashina Shakiru, a Lagos-based community journalist who manages Mile 2 Community News, was brutalised and threatened to be shot dead by security agents code-named Operation Mesa (Op-Mesa) at about 8:56 am today.

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Shakiru told FIJ how the security operatives unjustly injured him while he was going about his traffic reportage in the early hours of Thursday

“I was covering the traffic on Mile 2 inward Orile. I focused my camera on that particular traffic scene. From the other end, which was the highway, suddenly, the Op-Mesa descended on me directly,” Shakiru said.

“‘Who are, who are you? What are you doing with the video?’ one of them asked. I said, ‘I am a traffic reporter.’ Immediately, I showed him my ID card. As this man was checking my phone, another one came, slapped the hell out of me and injured me with an iron rod on my head. Then he started harassing me: ‘If you talk or argue anything, I will shoot you.'”

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Forty-year-old Shakiru, who has been reporting for the community for three years, said officials of OP-MESA suspected he was “covering” their patrol movement, only to find out otherwise after checking through his phone.

“Immediately, I stepped back after the shooting threats. The officer still holding my phone had checked through if I had recorded or taken any sensitive video or picture. He thought I was covering their patrol movement. But then he did not find anything as such, and he dropped the phone. The officer that injured me came again and collected the phone. He threatened to shoot me dead if I got close to him,” he said.

“A man I suspect to be an officer in mufti walked towards and talked with them, and my phone was released. Afterwards, I went to a nearby clinic to stich up the wounds and went to the police station to report. There, I was given a medical report to go to a general hospital in Lagos for proper treatment.”

Shakiru, who reported the case to the Satellite Divisional Police Station, Amunwo, after the incident, was given a medical report addressed to the medical officer in charge of the Ajeromi General Hospital in the Ajegunle area of Lagos.

The report reads: “Please undertake the treatment of the patient whose particulars are given in the column below and according with section 6 (8) of the Criminal Procedure Acts, render your report of any observation and/or treatment also in the column below and return this form so duly completed to the IPO for further investigation.”

FIJ spoke with SP Benjamin Hundeyin, Police Public Relations Officer, Lagos State Command, on the phone, who said he did not know anything about the Op-Mesa brutality at Mile 2.

Ige 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.