Adeola Adejare, a Lagos-based writer, has narrated how police officers attached to the Area F Police Command, Lagos, assaulted and arrested him for defying the recent Lagos State ban on commercial motorcycle operations.

Adejare told FIJ that he was on his way to work on Friday morning when two police officers in mufti approached him at Ikeja Along Bus Stop. The writer added that the officers accused him of getting off a commercial motorcycle on the highway, despite the recent ban imposed on all such activities by the Lagos State Government.

“They saw me trekking but accosted me, insisting that I just got off a commercial motorbike. While I was still explaining that I was not on any bike, they started beating me. One of them hit me with a plank on my leg before dragging me into their van,” Adejare said.

The writer stated that as he tried explaining to them that their approach was wrong, they told him to press charges against the Lagos State Commissioner of Police or the Lagos State Government.

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He said the officers also beat up a lady who was using her phone to record how he was being assaulted by them.

According to Adejare, the officers also arrested many other people and accused them of committing similar offences, despite not having any proof.

“The police drove us to Area F in Ikeja and collected everything we had, except our clothes. They then shoved us into a cell even without getting any statement from us. They insisted that we were all offenders who had disobeyed the state’s ban on the use of commercial motorcycles,” he said.

“Some minutes later, they brought me out of the cell. This was because they noticed I had already called some influential people on our way to their office. Later, I also saw many people come to bail out their arrested folks. The entire incident and subsequent events were quite traumatising.”

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Adejare also told FIJ that the police transported some of the ‘wrongly accused’ people to their Alausa office for charges to be pressed against them.

“After I regained my freedom, I was forced to imagine what would have happened to me if I had not called ‘the people I know to come to my rescue,” he said.

“The irony of the whole experience is that, this set of policemen have continued to overlook the commercial motorcycle riders who still brazenly operate along that route despite the ban. They abandoned the real defaulters and chose to arrest innocent commuters.”

When FIJ called Benjamin Hundeyin, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), he disputed the writer’s story, saying there was no way the police would have arrested people randomly.

“We do not do random arrest,” he said.