A Twitter user, who identified himself only as Adebola, has lamented how some policemen from the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Abeokuta, Ogun State, allegedly robbed him of N300,000 on Thursday.
The victim, in a series of tweets on Friday via his handle, @educatedthurg, claimed that the cops accosted him and his brother at the Interchange Roundabout while they were taking their mother to a hospital.
But the Ogun State Police Command faulted Adebola for not reporting the incident to the nearest police station.
The artiste said the policemen, who had the tag ‘Eleweran SCIID’ written on their shirts, profiled them as internet fraudsters (Yahoo Boys) and took their phones.
“After about 30 minutes of going through our phones and finding nothing, they asked who owns the car we were driving, and we told them it belongs to my sister, who allowed us to take the car out because we were taking my mum to the hospital. After about an hour of interrogation, they got into our car and drove us to a place in Siun, where they stopped and demanded N500, 000, which we insisted that we can’t pay because we have done nothing wrong.
“Out of anger and perceiving us as being stubborn and not willing to comply, they drove us to a police station in Owode Egba roundabout, opposite Oando filling station where they threatened to lock us up and said we would pay more if we spend a night in their cell.
“They went through the phones again saying it’s not possible for us to have nothing on us. This time they found an alert on my brother’s phone with an available balance of N1.2 million.
“The angry officer asked how my brother got that amount of money in his account which my brother explained that he is a forex trader and he even showed the officer his trades and charts.
“We realised it was getting serious and out of hand because the officers looked desperate and willing to do anything to us. So, we decided to negotiate with them and they said they are not taking less than N300,000 from us because of the stress we have put them through.
“We agreed to pay the money just to gain our freedom back because my mum was scared of death and worried also. They refused a transfer because they said it is traceable, so they directed us to a POS close to the police station to make the withdrawal.
“After collecting the money, they now asked us to make a minute video saying we are Yahoo Boys and admitting that no money was taken from us – we did it because my mum was worried and these men don cock gun like one million times (sic) they have over 60 similar videos of different victims on their phones.
“They were very careful not to mention their names; they go by different code names. I could remember ERU, TIGER, and AGBARA,” he wrote on Twitter.
While showing a snapshot of proof of the withdrawals and the location, he asked for help from some social media influencers to recover the N300,000 he allegedly gave the cops.
The Nigeria Police were also tagged in the tweets.
The Police Public Relations Officer, Ogun State, Abimbola Oyeyemi, urged the victim to report to the nearest police station, saying the officers would be identified and punished.
He said, “We have always said it that if any of our men are guilty of any misdemeanor, the right thing to do is to report to the authorities concerned. If you report, we will be able to fish out those people and deal with them based on laid down rules.
“The police will never condone any act of indiscipline, extortion, or corruption. That is why we have different units dealing with such situations. We have X-Squad, Provost, CP’s Monitoring, AIG Monitoring; they are all to monitor the excesses of our men.
“If you claim that the sum of N300,000 was collected from you and you just kept quiet, and you don’t deem it fit to report those policemen and you go on social media to report, it does not make any sense.
“Go and report for us to know the exact point where it happened and we will know the people who were there at that material time. What if they are not even policemen?”
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