The Lagos state commissioner of police has been accused of parading an innocent man as a dreaded cultist.
The man was paraded. Photo credit. #dealstarReporter
If it were the eighteenth century, they could have been slaves lined up for auction.But it was 2018 — May 28 precisely — and they were men labelled criminals by the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal.
Bayo Jimoh, a 26-year-old transport worker, and about 35, others were paraded before the media for different criminal offences ranging from cultism, kidnapping, ritual killing and sexual assault to abuse. The CO told pressmen at the suspect parade that Jimoh and 30 others were members of the ‘Eye’ cult group arrested in different parts of the state.
However, as pressmen interrogated these suspects who had been condemned as criminals without as much as a thorough investigation from the Police, Jimoh and two other men kept weeping, claiming they were not members of any cult group.
“We are not cultists. We were arrested in our room. The Police kicked our door open. We had even thought it was robbers trying to get in until we discovered it was SARS. They did not tell us what we did, they just brought us here,” Jimoh and one other male suspect told SaharaReporters as they wept like babies.
The commissioner did not budge; he walked past crying Jimoh and his mates without paying them any serious attention. “These ones are cultists,” a junior officer told the CP as he led pressmen from one suspect to the other.
A Mother Looking For Her Son
Two weeks after the parade, Saharareporters traced Jimoh’s home, located along Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway and found his mother, a light-skinned woman probably in her late forties.
Mrs. Jimoh, who received this reporter at the corridor — it also served as a kitchen — of her home, told Saharareporters that the policemen at the anti-cultism unit in Gbagada, where she learnt her son had been taken, denied her audience.
“I was told to go back home and wait for my son to be shown on television,” she said.
Jimoh’s mother would not have known her son had been arrested had someone not alerted her of the raid later on Sunday morning.
“Someone came to ask for Bayo and I told him that he went to a party and only came home to pick the key to his tricycle,” she said. “He then asked if I had not heard what had happened, that my son was part of those that were raided by the police overnight.”
She recalled how she traversed different police stations before she was finally directed to the command headquarters in Ikeja, Lagos.
“We didn’t know the station they took him to. We first went to Ipaja but he was not there. The men then said I should go and wait at home that they would go find out where they had taken him to. The men then told me it was Gbagada; I went to Gbagada and I was told to go home to watch my son on television.
“I went to Lagos Island, thinking that was where he would be. It was at a police station on the island that I was directed to Ikeja. It took me a while to locate the Ikeja police station because I am not familiar with the route.
“I found the station [Ikeja Police Command] on Monday afternoon; I met other women who had come looking for their sons. At first we were not allowed to enter. We were told to stay outside. I saw a bus drive past us but I did not know my son was in the bus. It was later he told me he saw me standing with other women outside.
“We went back to Gbagada but I could not secure his bail on Monday. The officer I met said he would need to seek permission from his superior first, so I was told to come back the next day. On Tuesday, we signed some papers and they released him to me.”
When asked if she paid for her son’s bail, she simply asked: “is it possible to go to a police station without parting with money?”
However, she refused to disclose how much she paid, instead choosing to be thankful that her son was released.
“I just thank God that my son was released and I don’t have to deal with court case,” she said.
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