An Abuja-based human rights lawyer, Tolu Babaleye has revealed that some policemen attached to the Ekiti State Police Command have refunded a sum of N190,000 collected from his son who was forced to withdraw the money at gunpoint.
Babaleye who commended the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba over his prompt intervention upon complaints, revealed that the IGP’s intervention made the policemen refund the said amount within twenty-four hours.
“Not up to twenty minutes that I made a call to the IGP’s monitoring unit, this meticulous officer called me back that the police who followed my son to the POS will call me to refund the money and that action would be taken. Not up to 15 minutes thereafter, the policeman called me to apologize and asked me to send account details for a refund. I berate him and lashed him with words and asked for his remaining partners in crime but he was just begging. The money was refunded this morning.
“I wish to express my profound gratitude to the Inspector General of Police, officers of his Monitoring Team, and DCP Marcus of Ekiti State Command who was a former DPO of Ishua and Oka Akoko for their prompt intervention in this matter,” he said.
The lawyer said the incident happened on Monday in the state capital when his son and friends were travelling to Ilorin, Kwara State capital.
According to him, the policemen who were conducting stop and search along the road stopped the vehicle conveying his son and searched through their phones and bags.
He added that it was after the search that his son and others were allegedly harassed and detained for hours before they were taken to a nearby PoS agent close to the command headquarters where his son was forced to withdraw N190,000 from his account.
He said, “Just on Monday, some bad eggs in the Nigerian Police of Ekiti State Command harassed my son who was travelling along Ado Ekiti axis with another of his sibling and one of his friends, searched their phones illegally and found nothing but still went ahead to beat them, detained two of them and took my first son to the POS opposite their command headquarters to withdraw N190,000 from my son’s account.
“My son was forced to also pay another N5,0000 to the POS guy and out of the N5,000 in his pocket, these policemen still collected N3,000 and asked them to go with N2,000 as their transport fare, and thereafter, these policemen released their numbers to my people.”
However, the Police Public Relations Officer(PPRO) , ASP Sunday Abutu said he was not aware of the incident but promised to investigate and get back to our correspondent.
As of the time of this report, the PPRO was yet to do as promised after six hours.
