By Robert AKPAN, Senior Investigator Correspondent Lagos/
LAGOS– THE Commissioner of Police Lagos State Police Command CP Adegoke Fayoade has querried the Divisional Police Officers DPO Epe Divisional Headquarters, CSP Godwin Okoruwa for accepting the sum of N2m cheque from an Epe paramount ruler(names withheld)to release four arrested suspected armed robbers. Sources said the suspects were arrested by police detectives attached to Epe Division while on Stop and Search duty with locally made guns cut to size and cartridges and were being grilled when the paramount ruler called the DPO that the boys arrested were not armed robbers but those working for him. He reportedly signed a N2m cheque and sent it through one of his boys to the DPO with an instruction to give N1m to the boys that arrested the suspects and the remaining N1m for the DPO.
It was learned that the DPO quickly collected the cheque and called for the case file of the suspects and was about releasing them when an unnamed traditional ruler in Bariga, Lagos who had been following the antics of the DPO and the Epe paramount ruler got hint of the foregoing and alerted the Commissioner of Police Lagos State Police Command who promptly ordered that the suspects be brought to the Command Headquarters Ikeja, first thing the following morning. Confused on what next to do, reports say the DPO who do not on one hand wants to undermine the paramount ruler said to be his benefactor and on the other, risk his job by disobeying his boss, quickly moved the boys handcuffed from the station to an unnamed hotel to sleep to aviod the visit of the paramount ruler and as early as 5.00am, boarded a vehicle to Ikeja as instructed by the CP.
Sources said the DPO had been a thorn on the flesh of one Baale Olalekan Olatunde over an age long face-off between him and Elepe of Epe over ownership of a particular vast expanse of land. Guns and other dangerous weapons were reportedly planted by the DPO’s boys at the homes of loyalists to Baale Olatunde, arrested and arraigned for illegal possession of arms allegedly on the instruction of Elepe of Epe.
The paramount ruler was said to weild so much power and influence as to influence Magistrates and judges to remand arrested loyalists of the Baale. Frantic efforts to get the reaction of the Command’s PRO SP Benjamin Hundeyin was not successful as he said he was with the CP and therefore, could not talk. “I am with my Oga right now so I can’t pick your calls, please let me call you back later,” he texted.
