Published 4th Apr, 2022

By Emmanuel Uti

Lateef Toyese, a student at the Federal Polytechnic Ede in Osun State, has detailed how unidentified police officers attached to the state extorted N40,000 from him at gunpoint.

Toyese told FIJ that he was in a car travelling to Ado-Ekiti from Ikire on March 28 when he encountered the officers before the overhead bridge after Wasimi, a village in Osun State. He said they stopped his car and asked him to unlock his phone for them but he refused.

The police officers asked his driver to continue the journey without him when they realised he was insistent on not unlocking his phone, said Toyese. The driver pleaded with the officers, but they would not listen.

“I had to unlock my phones for them, but it did not end well. The officer who checked my phone called me a fraudster. Other officers then said they would lock me up and take me to the EFCC in Ibadan. By this time, the driver had left,” he said.

Toyese told FIJ he was not a fraudster. He asked the officers after the driver left him what he could do to be free, and they asked him to pay N300,000.

“I told them I could not cough up such an amount, and that I could only afford N10,000. But the officer who checked my phone asked me to open my bank app. The amount in it was N40,000,” he said.

“After seeing my balance, they said the least they could collect was N50,000. Then one officer asked me to call anyone I could. I called my brother, who transferred N10,000. I was in their car all the while; they were driving me to Gbongan.”

He said the superior officer among the four who arrested him asked him to go when they did not receive what his brother had sent.

“I sent the money to an account. I am sure it was a PoS account. They dropped me at Gbongan. I tried to take a picture of their car when they left me, but it had no plate number,” he said.

When FIJ called Yemisi Opalola, the Osun State Police spokesperson, the connection was bad. At press time, she had not responded to a text sent to her phone.

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