A lawyer named Kingsley Nnonye got the shock of his life on Thursday when he encountered some policemen at the Irapana-end of Abuja-Okene Highway in Kogi State.
Nnonye had left his base in Abuja for Warri, Delta State, to fetch a new car his wife had recently acquired.
While heading back to Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, the legal practitioner had a smooth trip until he got to the Kogi community around noon where things took a disturbing turn.
According to Nnonye, despite checking and confirming the completeness of the car’s documents, the policemen employed different tactics, including threatening to kill him if he failed to offer them a bribe.
The police team led by one Inspector Ade boasted to the lawyer that if they killed him, nobody was going to find out or do anything to them.
The law enforcement officers while trying to put fear into Nnonye, forced him to drive the car to different sections of the highway to carry out their corrupt agenda.
Explaining how he managed to free himself from the rogue policemen, who were prepared to kill him if he failed to grease their palms with some good naira notes, the lawyer told SaharaReporters on Friday that, “On my way from Warri where I went to drive my wife’s new car to Abuja, every police checkpoint I encountered, I identified myself as a lawyer.
“The journey was smooth until I got to Abuja-Okene Highway at a location known as Irapana where a police patrol team stopped and demanded to see the vehicle’s particulars which I obliged.
“The team leader, one Inspector Ade, who checked the documents and saw that everything was in order, insisted that my papers were suspect.
“He claimed that only one witness signed the car agreement and that the number plate on the agreement of sale differed from what was on the papers. I was astonished and demanded to see what he was talking about but he refused.
“I told him I knew all the gimmicks of policemen, he got infuriated and ordered me to reverse the car and follow him to their area command. I obeyed and headed back to Okene which was many kilometres away.
“While on the way, one of the policemen advised me to play the game but I refused.
“Inspector Ade came to meet me in the car and told me that if they shot and killed me there, nobody could expose it. Immediately, I had a brain reset and tried to call some senior officers I knew at Force Headquarters in Abuja but they did not allow me to do so.
“They thereafter asked me to pay N50,000. They asked me to go with them to a nearby village to use POS (Point of Sale) to withdraw the money.
“I told them I could only afford N5,000. They initially rejected it but later collected the money before allowing me to go.
“I’ve been wondering what they could have done to ordinary citizens who are not lawyers like me. That Inspector Ade is evil. His kind would rob and kidnap people at odd hours under the guise of police patrol. I know him and can identify the officer.”
When contacted over the issue, spokesperson for the police in Kogi, Williams Aya, told SaharaReporters that the matter had not been reported to them, adding that it would be investigated as soon as that was done.
Aya further said that if found to be true, the errant policemen will be severely sanctioned to serve as a deterrent to others.
