Another Nigerian has disclosed how some police officers forced him to wire N130,000 to them after the officers abducted him on an highway in Ibadan, Nigeria’s South-west.
The incident happened on April 1 along the Ibadan expressway, close to Gurumaraji/Ibadan tollgate, according to information on a Twitter post that narrated what happened.
The victim’s name is Babatola Ogundedina as shown in the transaction receipt posted on the microblogging site as evidence of the wired money.
The money was wired through a Stanbic IBTC account to an OPAY account belonging to Festus Akele.
Mr Ogundedina said he was driving his friend’s Toyota Venza car when the officers flagged him down on the highway.
He said the officers questioned him, made a phone call and confirmed the car belonged to his friend. They also searched the car and found nothing incriminating, he said.
“Once he (an officer) finished talking to my friend who owns the car, he started going through my phone. He saw an email on the phone and that’s when they started saying I’m a Yahoo boy (internet fraudster),” Mr Ogundedina said.
The officer told their victim he must have been involved in an internet scam for him to be driving a Toyota Venza.
Mr Ogundedina said the officers rejected his appeal that they should take him to a police station. He said they threatened to shoot him if he refused to cooperate with them.
Mr Ogundedina said he was afraid of his life because the incident happened around 6 a.m. and that the area was quiet except for the cars that were driving past on the highway.
“So they entered the car and started driving me around and threatened that they will do different to me.
“I asked them what they wanted and they asked me to give them N500,000. I was shocked but due to the fact that they kept threatening me I had to beg them to collect N130,000 out of the N140,000 that was left in my account.
“They gave me an Opay account, which I did,” the victim said.
Police reaction
The Complaint Response Unit of the police responded to the tweet. It requested the Twitter user who posted it, Emeria Godwin, to furnish them with his “contact details”.
A similar incident happened on Wednesday when some officers abducted a Nigerian music producer in Lagos and forced him to wire N1.2 million to them.
The officers were later identified and the money recovered and returned to the owner after Nigerians expressed outrage on social media.