FORCE Publuc Relations Officer (FPRO) ACP Olumuyiwa Adejobi has said that police personnel who trot guns at Nigerians in order to extort them are not different from armed robbers.
A crypto trader and influencer on X had dragged the police after his house was allegedly broken into and he was arrested forcefully.
The man claimed plain cloth police officers broke into his estate without any search warrant, taking all the men who lived there to the station, questioning them and claiming they were internet fraudsters.
He provided debit alerts where they took some money from him while stating that they collected a total of five hundred thousand from all the men who live in his estate.
“So Policemen came to my estate yesterday evening around 7 PM and packed all the men in the estate. We all slept in the cell last night for no reason. When we were called for ‘Questioning’ which was more or less a dictation. They said ‘You dey do Yahoo’ I denied it because I don’t even know how Yahoo works.
“The next thing was to write a statement saying I’m either a cultist or an armed robber. We all refused to write statements without lawyers present, so we were forced to sleep in the cell. This morning, over 500k, was extorted from us in general,” the post read partly.
Tagging the Force PRO, a user said: “As PRO of Nigeria Police Force, do something to this dirty stuff your mates always do every day. Police are your friend indeed.”
Adejobi, in his response, wrote: “Any armed policeman or security operative who forcefully extorts an innocent Nigerian is as good as an armed robber.
“Extortion is never part of any agency’s mandate, either armed or not. We condemn such, and even the IGP has made it clear.”
Eighteen-Eleven Media