Published 19th Oct, 2021

By Emmanuel Uti

On Saturday, Oladimeji Alimi, a cryptocurrency analyst and prospective corp member, was heading to Ilorin when officers attached to the Ilorin Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested him and extorted ₦50,000.

The police officers stopped Alimi’s vehicle at about 12:30 pm along Ilorin airport and ordered his driver to pull over so they could search the male passengers.

Following the search, the officers asked Alimi and three other men to follow them to their vehicle, saying they wanted to search them properly. By this time, they had already asked the driver to continue the journey without them.

“When we got to the van, we dropped our bags for a search. They found nothing incriminating on us, yet asked us to follow them to the police station,” he said.

Alimi could not resist the officers, seeing they were desperate to inflict pain on anyone who dared to disobey their order. The officers seized their phones and drove them to the Police ‘A’ Division at Challenge round-about, Ilorin.

“At the police station, they asked us to unlock our phones for them to check. The officers went through my WhatsApp and other personal applications to ascertain if I was a fraudster,” he said.

“When they saw the Binance app on my phone, they immediately labelled me a fraudster. A WhatsApp chat with a friend where I exchanged my wallet was what they used against me.”

Later, the officers told Alimi to write a statement that he was a fraudster. On writing the statement, the officers filled out a detention form, telling Alimi that he would be detained if he didn’t bail himself out with N250,000.

“I began to plead with them to accept the N48,000 in my account, but the officers said it was nothing to them. After I pleaded for hours, they finally accepted N50,000. I transferred it to them,” he said.

Alimi told FIJ he needs the N50,000 he gave to them to pay for his certificate and convocation at the University of Ilorin next Saturday.

FIJ placed calls to Olasannmi Ajayi, Kwara State Police Spokesperson’s lines but they were unreachable. At press time, he had not responded to a text message sent to him.

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