The family of a 28-year-old Olayode Adeoye, who died after policemen from the Elere Division, Orile Agege, Lagos raided Ajayi Igbe Street and detained him with two others have incriminated the police of torturing him to death.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that Adeoye and three friends were having a drink at a bar on Ajayi Igbe Street around 11am on Thursday when the police team in a commercial bus came to apprehend them.
“But we all emerged to ask the policemen who numbered about six what the men had done erroneous, they gave no answer,” a resident of the street told our correspondent
Our correspondent visited the street on Friday, where residents who accumulated in groups discussing the incident in anger verbalized they had earlier marched in protest to the Elere Police Division, but were dispersed with gunshots.
An elder brother of the deceased, Mr. Tajuden Oyelola, verbally expressed he had still not been able to digest why the police would beat Adeoye to death.
“Those who were there when they were apprehended and those who optically discerned him when he was taken to the hospital verbally expressed he was tortured. I am still in shock. How could any human being do that to another human being?”
A resident, Kafilat Oyenusi verbalized the men were apprehended in her sister’s bar.
Oyenusi verbalized, “These men were having a drink like any other person. We all ken them as genial men on the street. When the police took the men away, they came back about one hour later for my sister. We asked why they came to take my sister away but one of the policemen threatened to shoot us.
“We followed them to the station and that was where we learnt that the men had authentically admitted to being ‘Yahoo boys’ (a Nigerian term for Internet fraudsters). The boys verbalized the policemen asked them to bail themselves with N500, 000 but they verbalized they could only pay N40, 000. That was when the policemen commenced to beat them. We later left the place hoping that we would come back in the evening.
“But we got a report around 4pm that Olayode had slumped in the cell and was taken to the hospital. By 1am this morning (Friday), he was dead.”
The landlord of the deceased verbally expressed albeit he was not cognizant that the men were Internet fraudsters, he was vigilant they admitted that much to the police and visually perceived no reason why they should have been tortured.
“The three boys were genial men. The police genuinely came to probe their dormitory and took away their laptops,” he verbalized.
Another resident told our correspondent that the three men were his friends and that another friend of theirs who went to the police station was withal detained.
“When he was detained, he told us that they were beaten and Olayode was genuinely strung up afore he collapsed and they asked him to take Olayode to the All Souls Infirmary, where he died.”
At the hospital which was few metres from the police station, a medico verbally expressed they had nothing to verbally express as it was a police matter.
The divisional police officer, Mr. Philip Eze, verbally expressed the matter was being transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department and he could not comment since he was not the police spokesperson.
But a police officer, who was vigilant of the case at the station verbally expressed under condition of anonymity that the matter did not transpire as the residents alleged.
