An eyewitness has narrated how officers of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad allegedly wrongly accuse people of murder
The Nigerian man had alleged that the officers rounded up male citizens in Mushin area of Lagos State to accuse of murder
According to him, he witnessed a Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) brutality and has shared the story of what happened on social media.
The man identified as Tokunbo Akintola further revealed that a policeman had been killed in Mushin days before the raid
Noting that the incident occurred on Wednesday, February 28, at Abbatoir, Itire in Mushin area of Lagos state while he was passing through, Akintola explained that he saw SARS officers randomly select young men and throw them into a black maria.
He noted that he had to find a place to hide until the raid was over before he could leave his hiding spot.
He claimed that about 400 men were taken away to the police headquarters in Ikeja where they accused of killing a police officer days before the raid.
He said the men who were taken were put in jail without food or water.
According to Akintola, the men who couldn’t prove their innocence out of the 400 that were taken to Ikeja headquarters have been taken to Potoki prison in Badagry.
Read post below:
“28 February, 2018. It was about 8:00pm, and I was taking a short cut through the abbatoir at Itire, Mushin LGA, Lagos.
As I am used to being alert for the regular movement of cattle at the abbatoir, I thought the slight pandemonium ahead was just another of such movements of mean-looking bulls. I was wrong.
Before I could blink, one armed SARS officer from the Nigeria Police Force grabbed a guy in front of me by his belt, and started pulling him towards a dark place I’d come to find out was parked a black maria.
He was just an innocent passerby. No questions asked.
It was when the same officer came back with eyes scanning the area that I understood what was going on.
It was a raid, and the police were out to round up innocent Nigerians. So I just found out a quiet place to wait out the idiocy many Nigerians have come to accept as the norm from our largely unprofessional police.
So, I took a quiet detour around one of the stalls in the market and found a dark place to stay with a few guys I had quickly alerted earlier.
Although I had my ID card that had worked like magic with the police in time past, I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be uhuru if I became unlucky enough to be found near the black Maria.
“Obey before complain”,and the next thing: you are calling your wife to call somebody, etc.
So I took a photo from where I hid and from there I had a view of the truck or black maria in which innocent passersby, all males, where packed full like cattle.
After a few minutes, after the truck had left, I decided to walk past the cops alone thinking it was over, when I heard one whisper something to his colleague to which the other replied aloud:
“Leave am. Leave that one.”
To cut a long story short, it was a sting operation and about 400 innocent Nigerian men were rounded up, from all walks of life, taking to the Police HQ in Ikeja and slammed with a murder charge.
A policeman had been killed in the Mushin market days earlier, so they had taken it out on residents of Itire, Mushin.
These people spent days in cells without food and water, and were taken to a mobile court to be accused of murder. As usual, some had to find ways to exonerate themselves, with the unlucky ones who didn’t know anyone sent to Potoki Prison, Badagry, where they remain till date.
Innocent but charged and sentenced. That was what I escaped on a night that seemed like a regular one.
You can only push people so far before they start fighting back. If the Nigeria Police keep up with their unprofessionalism and callousness, it’s only a matter of time before the people decide that enough is enough.
I can hardly wait for that time, because they have failed to realize that Nigerians are becoming wiser and better aware.”