TheCable

At a time of an ongoing outrage to stop police brutality in Nigeria, policemen attached to the anti-kidnapping/cultism squad of Lagos police command, barged into some houses on Ogati street in  Fadeyi area of Lagos in the early hours of Thursday.  

TheCable learnt that the policemen forced their way into at least five houses, while people were arrested from their sleeping beds.

A woman whose husband was picked up in the raid narrated the encounter

“At about 4:30am on Thursday, my husband, Rauf Yusuf and my two sons were asleep when heavy knocks hit our door,” Tayo Yusuf, a mother of two whose husband was arrested told TheCable when the newspaper visited the area Thursday afternoon.

“We had thought it was an armed robbery attack, but a voice shouted behind the door that they were policemen and they would blow the door open if we did not open that moment.

“The policemen had jumped over the fence to get access to our building because at the time, 4:30am, our gate was still under lock.”

The family panicked, but Yusuf pulled the courage to open the door.

“About six heavily armed policemen entered, with their bodies reeking of alcohol and cigarette. My two sons were up, crying and one of the policemen hit the youngest, a boy of 5, with the door. I attempted to protest this, but one of them threatened to shoot me, aiming his muzzle at me.”

The policemen reportedly demanded to search the house and they were not obstructed even when a warrant to search the Yusufs’ home was not shown them.

“They searched every corner and they found nothing,” Yusuf explained to TheCable.

The woman said one of the policemen who appeared to be the team leader asked who Lukman was. She said her husband told them he is not the one answering Lukman, giving them his name as Rauf Yusuf.

The husband then told his wife to help him get his ID card from the bedroom for the policemen to confirm his name but before his wife returned to the scene, he had been whisked away.

“He was in boxers, and I had my night wrapper on,” she said.

By 7am, Yusuf ran to the anti-kidnapping/cultism squad’s office in Surulere where her husband has been detained. She was not allowed to go beyond the gate as she was continually harassed by policemen stationed at the gate.

“Tell me why my husband was picked in the middle of the night in such an inhumane manner,” Yusuf cried.

The policemen, however, shrugged, telling her that her cry was meaningless if she did not ‘know the right thing to do.’

With a family member who had joined her, they were threatened with arrest should they continue asking the police why her husband was arrested.

Yusuf who had submitted a petition to the Lagos state office of the public defender had demanded that her husband be released.

“Rauf Yusuf, my husband, 34 years old, has never been involved in any criminal activity since I know him, more than a decade now,” she wrote in the petition seen by TheCable.

“He works at a private company around Surulere.”

When TheCable visited the police anti-kidnapping/cultism squad where Yusuf was being held, the investigating police officer (IPO) and the officer in charge (OC) of the squad were not available.

“Go and meet the force PRO now,” one of the policemen stationed at the gate, with a furious tone, told TheCable’s correspondent.

Sources around the police station explained that what the police need is money, and those arrested will be freed. “One of those guys brought here has been freed with just N10, 000,” a source said.

When contacted through his telephone line, Okosun Odion, a chief superintendent of police who is the squad’s OC could not make any comment.

“Please, come to my office and see something,” he repeatedly said over the phone.

Chike Oti, a superintendent of police and the force public relations officer for Lagos command told TheCable that people do not understand how the police operate.

“It is very easy to smear law enforcement officers,” he began. “When you come to enforce law, the tendencies are that people will see you as employing brute force, unknown to them that what you might be employing is what we call minimum force, and this is to make the suspect follow you.”

Police investigations, according to Oti, led the policemen to Ogati street. “The owner of the riffle was apprehended.”

Oti described the scene as that of a crime in which policemen wouldn’t have handled with softer hands. “If they ask you to go to lions’ den, how do you approach it? The approach will be different from when you are going to pastor or imam’s place.”

TheCable gathered that the police had first alleged that Yusuf and others arrested were picked at armed robbery scenes but changed the narrative that Yusuf and others are members of a notorious cult who attacked people last Saturday in Fadeyi area.

Shortly after TheCable had reached the police spokesman for comments over the matter, our correspondent was notified that Yusuf had been released. He was freed around 4pm, Friday.

“I was beaten inside that cell,” Yusuf said when TheCable reached him over the telephone. “It was inside that cell that those policemen themselves said that the riffle was found on Ogunjobi street, a street on the other side far from ours. They just came to our side to pick innocent people because they want money.”

Yusuf confirmed to TheCable that N10, 000 was paid the police to secure his freedom Friday evening.

“That’s apart from the money they collected on me while inside the cell,” he said. “It was the officer who brought the bail bond that collected the N10, 000,” he added.

Between October and December, 2016, a report released by the police public complaint rapid response unit (PPCRRU) showed that policemen in Lagos were involved in about 153 cases of professional misconduct making them top the chart of bad-behaved policemen in Nigeria.

In November, 2017, the World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI)— a report measuring police ability— had rated the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) worst in the world.