Police Abduct Shop Owner, Negotiate N200,000 Ransom for His Release
Policemen attached to the Ilogbo Elegba station in the Ojo area of Lagos State abducted Peter Oriyomi, a resident of Shibiri, a neighbouring community in Ojo, on Thursday.
The police stormed Shibiri at about 11 am and picked up seven residents without stating any reason for doing so. Oriyomi was one of the victims.
When Oriyomi’s children visited the station, the police said they must pay N200,000 to secure his release.
At about 4 pm, the police began shifting their stance and said if Oriyomi’s daughter brought N50,000 and a copy of his National Identification Number (NIN) slip, they would release him to her.
During this period, the policemen did not accuse Oriyomi or the other people they arrested of a crime.
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Olamiposi, Oriyomi’s daughter, told FIJ on Thursday morning that her father left the family’s shop in the morning to arrange the money he made from 5 am to 9 am. When he returned to meet her there, he sat outside the shop to wait for someone to help him deposit the money in a bank.
“Police came there. I saw them and thought they were going to arrest fraudsters, but then they put my dad in handcuffs,” she told FIJ.
“People were telling them that he was a businessman with a stall there, but the police threatened us with a gun. One was going to use a taser on my sister, but she ran.
“They put him in a korope [tricycle] and asked us to pay N200,000 there. They collected the money in his hands too.”
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The policemen drove off with Oriyomi and others and kept them in detention. There, they negotiated a reduction to their earlier demand.
FIJ called the Lagos Police Complaints Response Unit (CRU), and they promised to investigate. They provided the phone number of Rilwan Kasumu, a policeman at the Ilogbo Elegba station.
Kasumu, in a telephone interview with FIJ on Thursday, promised to probe the matter and get Oriyomi released.
[FIJ]
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