A 21-year-old suspected robber, Akeem Popoola, says a
police inspector attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Lagos State
Police Command, Ikeja, uses him to swindle unsuspecting victims. He said he had
worked for the policeman, identified as Inspector Festus, aka Ijaya, for about four months before he was
arrested.
The carpenter, who is currently in custody at the Agbado
divison, Ogun State, was arrested for robbery and burglary. A mattress and
speakers of a sound system were reportedly recovered from him in the Giwa area
of Agbado on April 6. The suspect said that
apart from burglary, he used to collect phones from the inspector and he would
later sell them. He added that Ijaya and
two others – Abbey and Aluko – would get the buyers arrested minutes later for
buying stolen items. Akeem said their victims paid Ijaya between N120,000 and
N150,000 before they were released, adding that he got N5,000 as his share on
each ‘deal’.
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“In November 2015,
one of my father’s tenants and I fought. When my daddy came back home on that
day, she reported me to him and he handed me over to Inspector Festus at the
state police command headquarters, Ikeja. He told him I was too troublesome and
wanted him to discipline me. But he (Ijaya) did
not. He took me to a beer parlor at Alakuko and gave me N5,000. I was very
surprised.
“Two days after, we
met at another beer parlour around Agbado, where I was made to swear an oath.
He brought out a gun and put some gin inside the barrel. He drank from it and
gave me the gun to do same. He said he would be sending me on some errands. He
gave me a mobile phone and drove me in his Toyota Camry to POWA complex in
Ikeja.
“He told me to sell
the phone inside the complex which I did for N20,000. After an hour, he
handcuffed me and took me in his car with his boys – Abbey and Aluko – to the
man that bought the phone. He arrested the man and told him to pay N200,000 if
he did not want to be taken to the station. The man raised N150,000 among his
friends in that complex and gave him.
“When we left there,
he removed the handcuffs and gave me N5,000 and we departed.”
The Oke Ona,
Abeokuta indigene said the second deal he had with Ijaya was
an iPad he sold to another unsuspecting victim around Ikeja. He said he got a
N5,000 share from the N150,000 bribe the inspector allegedly collected from the
buyer, who was also accused of acquiring stolen property.
He added that when
he decided to quit, Ijaya refused and threatened they had sworn an oath and
that he would die if he backed out from the deal or revealed it to his father.
“Sometime in
February, the inspector gave me a Techo phone which I sold to a guy at Agbado.
The guy gave me N7,000 and a small phone. Thirty minutes later, we went back
with my hands handcuffed. And as he normally did, he collected about N120,000
from him before he was released. I also got my N5,000 share. I can say all this
in his presence,” he added. Akeem said he had stolen a plasma television at Oke
Aro area of Agbado on the order of Ijaya,
insisting that the item was still with the policeman.
The spokesperson for
the Ogun State Police Command, DSP Muyiwa Adejobi, said the police were on the
trail of Ijaya and
his accomplices. He added that the case had been transferred to the command’s
Special Anti-Robbery Squad.
He said, “The
suspect was arrested for robbery and burglary. He mentioned Ijaya and some others and we have commenced
investigation. If any of them is actually a policeman, we are going to send a
signal to the command he is attached to and he will be arrested.”
But the Lagos State
Police spokesperson, SP Dolapo Badmos, denied that Ijaya was a serving cop in the command.
“We don’t have a
policeman bearing Festus or Ijaya in the command,” she said.
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