Timothy Olaniyi, a Lagos-based lawyer, never expected to be assaulted by officers of the Nigeria Police Force until he became the recipient of severe slaps and beatings at the Lagos State Police Headquarters, Ikeja, on Wednesday.
Olaniyi was at the police command on the said day on behalf of a female colleague to find out about a client but received several beatings instead.
He told us that immediately after he arrived at the reception, he explained his reason for visiting and they directed him to a certain office. On getting there, he met a group of officers at the entrance discussing, and one of them asked him to get out of his sight.
Olaniyi was confused, yet he shrugged off the erratic behaviour with a smile, but the officer began to hurl insults at him, saying that his family would be victims of armed robbery attacks.
Olaniyi said he went back to the reception to report what he had just encountered but they asked him to go back and identify himself as a lawyer.
“When I got there the second time, this officer locked the door, dragged me inside one of the offices and began to beat me. He removed the backpack from my back and hit me with it several times. He tore my bag, removed my diary and then used it to hit me several times. Officers around asked him to stop and let me go,” Olaniyi told this news platform.
Olaniyi said he was in tears when he got out of the office where the power-drunk officer assaulted him. He said that upon stepping out, officers in the office next to the one where he had been assaulted called him and informed him that lawyers do not handle all matters.
“They also said the matter I came for, after I showed them their Facebook post, had been transferred,” he said. “One of these officers followed me back to the reception. When I got there, they all condemned what had happened. But one of them said Femi Falana had gone through a similar humiliating experience,” he said.
That same Wednesday, Olaniyi took to X (formerly Twitter), narrating to the public how a power-drunk officer assaulted him at the police command. After the post had raked in a significant amount of interest and reactions from the public, the police released a statement.
In the statement, the police said that the police officers who assaulted the lawyer were from outside the state and had been summoned for an identification parade to enable the lawyer to identify them.
Olaniyi explained all that had transpired when he was invited by Benjamin Hundeyin, the spokesperson for the Lagos Police, but Hundeyin questioned whether he would be calm if he saw the perpetrator.
“I then realised that what the officers said the previous day about some cases being inaccessible to lawyers was untrue. But the PPRO said the matter had gone beyond what he could settle and that we would go to the commissioner of police,” he said.
“When we got to his place, Adegoke Fayoade, the CP, blamed me for taking the matter to the internet. He told me they’d fish out the erring officer. That evening, I received a call from the PPRO. He asked if I could come back the following morning because they were carrying out an identification parade.
“I went there yesterday in the company of a senior counsel from the NBA. We waited till 1 pm. The whole identification process lacked accountability and integrity. The police said the police officer who slapped me was from Imo State and that he came to pick up an IPOB suspect arrested here in Lagos. They said that they had gone back. They packed a lot of police officers inside the room I was beaten in.”
He said that they went back to the commissioner’s office to give him an update on the matter after the identification exercise but he said the case was still being investigated.
“Ethnic sympathy and romance with the police officers took over the whole process. Even when I protested about the way and manner in which the whole process was going, I was scourged to remember the way and manner in which I talked about the issue. It was just an unfortunate situation. The police officer just beat me up for nothing,” said Olaniyi.
A phone call to Benjamin Hundeyin for updates on the matter, he did not take his call and has yet to respond to the text sent as a follow-up to his phone.
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