Soldiers and customs officers extorted over N100,000 from a driver in Ekiti on Friday, ‘Lekomo’, a Lagos-based car dealer, has revealed.

In a chat with FIJ on Sunday, Lekomo said he had sent the driver to deliver a car when he met the security officers who assaulted him and asked him to confess to internet fraud.

“After delivering the car, the buyer, his friends and the driver all went to celebrate the new car. After all the celebration, they decided to lodge the driver since he couldn’t travel back that night. They were rounded up while on their way or about getting to the hotel, by these men in military uniform,” he said.

“They wanted him to point out the owner of the car amongst those young guys but he refused. They collected their phones, searched and told them to accept that they were ‘yahoo boys’. After all the torture and threats, they (soldiers) demanded N10,000 from those guys and N5,000 from two of them.”

The driver had earlier met Customs officers in the state, who said the vehicle’s import duty was short-paid; they asked him to give them N100,000 or they would impound the car.

“This was a Nigeria-used Mercedes Benz GLK 2010 that had travelled a couple of times. It left Lagos on that fateful day and travelled through Ondo-Ore road, but no one complained of short pay until it got to their point. This is a car that had been registered in Nigeria since 2017,” Lekomo added.

“The driver gave me their zone number from Akure, but I can’t remember. He also said the name of one of them was Musa.”

‘Lekomo shared the evidence of the N100,000 payment and decried the unyielding disposition of Nigerian security agents towards extortion despite the massive #EndSars protest targeted at ending such fraudulent  behaviours.