Police extend harassment to Osun, threaten to beat Journalist
Police officers in Osun State have reportedly intensified harassment of civilians, especially youths who use expensive phones or are ‘flashy’ in dressing.
The harassment intensified after the alleged shooting of students of Osun State University (UNIOSUN) over claims that they were Internet fraudsters.
Our correspondent gathered that policemen had since then mounted major junctions in the state in search for ‘yahoo yahoo’ boys.
Some residents in Osogbo, the state capital also complained that policemen were now found of approaching them after withdrawal from the Automated Teller Machine (ATM).
It would be recalled that the founder of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore and staff of Premium Times were recently harassed and assaulted.
In one of the incidences witnessed by our correspondent, passengers in a commercial vehicle were ordered to alight, after which the two young males in the vehicle were invited for a search.
The incidence occurred at the popular RCC junction, Ede Road around 09.55am on Friday.
While one of the passengers submitted his phone for the search, the other requested to know why his phones needed to be searched.
On request, one of the police officers, Disu Usman, threatened to lock him up, saying that “You don’t know us abi! This is a robot team.”
When the passenger asked if he could be taken to the nearest police station, Usman responded that “you are very stupid for asking that question. Don’t you know who I am?”
Usman subsequently dragged the passenger who refused to submit his phone for search inside the vehicle and signalled to other policemen.
The forceful dragging of the passenger to the police vehicle attracted the intervention of other passengers of the 18-seater bus.
After their intervention, the passenger agreed to hand his phone over to the driver of the commercial vehicle who later gave it to the policemen to search.
While Usman examined the phone and could not find anything incriminating, he beckoned on another police office on bullet proof for another search on the phone.
The yet to be identified officer, who examined the contacts, messages, social applications (messengers) of the passenger, asked, “Where do you work? Where are you going to? Are you a Muslim?”
The passenger subsequently responded that he worked with Daily Times Newspaper and was going to make a transaction at a bank in Osogbo.
The officer later searched the bag of the passenger but still found nothing criminal, threatening that the journalist could be beaten.
Upon request for the passenger’s identity card which was provided, the officer said, “You don’t want us to search your phone because you are a journalist, we have searched and beaten a lawyer here before.”
Another officer, Abdullah Oyetunde, on arrival at the scene asked the passenger to re-submit his identity card.
He looked at the card and asked, “Where is the head office of Daily Times? Which companies are before and after it? If you cannot answer that, I will not release you.”
Speaking on why he was scared to release his phone, the passenger said, “I don’t know why a policeman will say I should give him my phone and he was not ready to tell me why. I needed to know why because dailing some codes now could reveal all you account details and subject you to security threat.
“I was more suspicious when the policeman was forcing the phone off my hand. Why could he be so desperate to the extend of wanting to snatch and dragging my phone from me? They didn’t even initially bother about my bag, they only wanted the phone at all means.
“And I was not surprised that after getting the phone, the message showing the last transaction I made was the target. I had to leave the phone when some elderly intervene and I was scared that the policemen can shoot or even kill me and cook up several lies to cover that up.”
Recall that about a week ago, two students of the Osun State University, Kazeem Adesola and Ibrahim Ajao were allegedly shot by some policemen in Osun State.
It was gathered that the students were playing football at a pitch off-campus around Oke-Baale when the policemen suddenly came in mufti and accused some of the students of involving in internet fraud also known as Yahoo-Yahoo (YY).
It was learnt that attempt by the students to resist the harassment led to the shooting.
When contacted for a reaction on the increasing police harassment in the state, the Osun State Police Command Public Relations Officer, Sade Odoro, said she needed to get more information about the recent happening.
She said that the recent allegation should not be linked with that of UNIOSUN students’ shooting, adding that that was already under investigation.
