POLICEMEN attached to the Surulere Police Division in Lagos State have arrested four men for committing an unheard-of crime of eating too late at night after they were found consuming noodles near the Ojuelegba Bridge.
Although the specific section of the penal code they have contravened has not been mentioned, the policemen were said to have nabbed the men around 11pm and queried them as to why they did not eat in their houses. One the suspects identified as Sango Svengali was said to have been eating the noodles at a shop on Ogunlana Drive around 11pm, when the policemen, said to number about eight in total swooped.
Arriving in three vans, the policemen bundled the four men into the back and then whisked them away to the Area C Command, Surulere. Upon arrival, the policemen at the counter allegedly demanded N15,000 (£51) settlement from the men, threatening that they would sleep in the cell overnight if they failed to settle.
Mr Svengali and his friends, who were not made to write any statement, offered N5,000 but the policemen refused. They were then brought before the area commander, who noted that they resembled Boko Haram members, so he then ordered them to shave their beards.
Mr Svengali said: “I had a stressful day at work on Tuesday and there was a lot of traffic, so instead of going home through the Third Mainland Bridge, I decided to spend the night at a friend’s place in Ojuelegba. Some other friends came to my friend’s place and later, around 11pm, we were hungry and we decided to go down the road to buy noodles.
“We drove to Ogunlana Drive and saw a woman selling noodles by the roadside, so the three of us decided to buy noodles and eat. We sat on the trunk of the two cars we brought and ate the food nit as we were about to go, three police vans stopped by our vehicles and they dragged me into one of their vans."
He added that the policemen did not ask them to identify themselves and when they were in the van, the policemen sitting beside him collected his phone and started searching through it. According to Mr Svengali, the policeman checked through his electronic mail, and when he did not find anything, he told him that they would sort it out at the station.
When they got to the station, they found that eight other people had been picked up too and they were told that their misdeed was that we ate at an unholy hour. They were then told that they looked like fanatics and Boko Haram members and warned that the only way they would be releases was if they shaved their beards.
Abayomi Shogunle, a Nigerian Police Force spokesman, said that a team of policemen had gone to the police station to ascertain the claim of the complainants. He added that a special monitoring team from the force headquarters on nationwide patrol is at the police station in Ojuelegba to verify the report.
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