On Thursday, policemen attached to the Lagos State Police Command extorted N407,000 from three men in the Opebi area of Lagos State, FIJ has gathered.
The three men were in a taxi heading home from a store where they had gone to purchase perfumes worth N450,000. When the police saw the receipt, they demanded N1 million.
Olufemi Olufisayo, a music enthusiast, was one of the men in the vehicle. He remembers two policemen flagging down their Uber driver and demanding to go through the phones of the three men.
“They went through our phones and found nothing incriminating,” Olufisayo told FIJ.
“Then they asked what we had with us, and we showed them the perfumes we bought.
“When they saw the receipt, they began questioning why young men like us would be buying perfumes worth N450,000. One of them said we must give them N1 million before they let us go.”
Olufisayo said the policemen had only black vests on with no name tags or distinctive insignia to identify them. They took one of the men over to a PoS merchant and made him transfer N400,000 after dropping their demands.
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The PoS merchant demanded N7,000 to facilitate the transaction. Soon, their N407,000 was gone.
After making this payment and regaining freedom from the police, Olufisayo took to X to share his experience.
Benjamin Hundeyin, Public Relations Officer of the police in Lagos, responded to this post and requested Olufisayo’s phone number. Olufisayo told FIJ he spoke with Hundeyin, who then sent him a number to call.
“I called this number, and they asked me if I could identify the policemen,” Olufisayo told FIJ. “I told them I did not have their names but could spot them if I saw them. That night, the police sent my money in full to me.” He shared this on X.
Olufisayo said the police did not invite him to identify the erring officers for disciplinary actions. Instead, it began to demand that he pull down the post on X.
FIJ called Hundeyin on Friday to ask if the police would be taking action against the men, but he did not answer the phone calls.
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