Moshood Jimoh, the commissioner of police for Lagos State, has said that “the situation we have in Nigeria” and bad network reception prevented the police from recording a video of Quadri Alabi, a 17-year-old boy who was unjustly detained over an armed robbery allegation, when he was making his confessional statement after his arrest.

Jimoh granted a live interview on Channels Television‘s The Morning Brief on Monday to defend the actions of the police as far as the illegal arrest and prosecution of the minor was concerned.

Police officers from the Amukoko Police Station framed Alabi with an armed robbery allegation and arraigned him in a magistrate’s court on January 26 in Apapa. The court ordered that Alabi be remanded at the Kirikiri Medium Security Custodial Centre. He spent three months in prison cleaning the faeces of other prisoners.

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One of the hosts asked whether the police allowed Alabi’s lawyer to witness how his statement was taken or whether he was recorded in a video giving the statement in the absence of his legal representative.

“The press statement that emanated from my office is very explicit about the act he was arrested for. When we arrest people, we don’t persecute them. We do proper investigations,” said Jimoh.

“If you say your age is 18 and there is no controversy about it, it is not an issue for us to begin to say we want to investigate it. But because it has now generated issues, we can begin to ask questions about his identity cards.

“In the new Administration of Criminal Justice Act, it is expected that we do a video when someone is making a confessional statement. But you know the situation we have in Nigeria; you may not even get network to do that.”

Alabi’s troubles began after a picture of his iconic appearance in front of Peter Obi’s convoy during one of his campaigns in Lagos in 2023 attracted financial favours to him.

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Street urchins were asking for their share of the money. When Alabi was not yielding to them as they expected, they made life a living hell for him in his neighbourhood.

The urchins eventually facilitated his arrest by the police. Subsequently, he was arraigned and remanded in prison.

“In Kirikiri, my daily task was to clean up faeces from morning until six in the evening because I couldn’t afford to pay the marshall,” Alabi, once a motor boy who now wishes to return to school, said while sharing his prison experience.