Akeem Popoola, a suspected robber says a police
inspector attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad
of the Lagos State Police Command, Ikeja, uses him to
swindle unsuspecting victims.
He said he had worked
for the policeman, identified as Inspector Festus,
aka Ijaya, for about four months before he was
arrested.
The carpenter, who is currently in custody at the
Agbado divison, Ogun State, was arrested for robbery
and burglary. A mattress and speakers of a sound
system were reportedly recovered from him in the
Giwa area of Agbado on April 6.
He told PUNCH that apart from burglary, he used to
collect phones from the inspector and he would later
sell them.
He added that Ijaya and two others – Abbey and
Aluko – would get the buyers arrested minutes later
for buying stolen items.
Akeem said their victims paid Ijaya between N120,000
and N150,000 before they were released, adding that
he got N5,000 as his share on each ‘deal’.
“In November 2015, one of my father’s tenants and I
fought. When my daddy came back home on that day,
she reported me to him and he handed me over to
Inspector Festus at the state police command
headquarters, Ikeja. He told him I was too
troublesome and wanted him to discipline me. But he
(Ijaya ) did not. He took me to a beer parlor at
Alakuko and gave me N5,000. I was very surprised.
“Two days after, we met at another beer parlour
around Agbado, where I was made to swear an oath.
He brought out a gun and put some gin inside the
barrel. He drank from it and gave me the gun to do
same. He said he would be sending me on some
errands. He gave me a mobile phone and drove me in
his Toyota Camry to POWA complex in Ikeja.
“He told me to sell the phone inside the complex
which I did for N20,000. After an hour, he handcuffed
me and took me in his car with his boys – Abbey and
Aluko – to the man that bought the phone. He
arrested the man and told him to pay N200,000 if he
did not want to be taken to the station. The man
raised N150,000 among his friends in that complex
and gave him. When we left there, he removed the
handcuffs and gave me N5,000 and we departed.”
The Oke Ona, Abeokuta indigene said the second deal
he had with Ijaya was an iPad he sold to another
unsuspecting victim around Ikeja. He said he got a
N5,000 share from the N150,000 bribe the inspector
allegedly collected from the buyer, who was also
accused of acquiring stolen property.
He added that when he decided to quit, Ijaya refused.
Akeem said that Ijaya threatened they had sworn an
oath and that he would die if he backed out from the
deal or revealed it to his father.
“Sometime in February, the inspector gave me a
Techo phone which I sold to a guy at Agbado. The guy
gave me N7,000 and a small phone. Thirty minutes
later, we went back with my hands handcuffed. And
as he normally did, he collected about N120,000 from
him before he was released. I also got my N5,000
share. I can say all this in his presence,” he added.
Akeem said he had stolen a plasma television at Oke
Aro area of Agbado on the order of Ijaya, insisting
that the item was still with the policeman.
His father, Mr. Ahmed Popoola, who regretted
handing him over to the policeman, said his son was
a thief before he took him to Ijaya for discipline.
He said he strove to meet Akeem’s needs and had
counselled him on several occasions to no avail.
“He had been stealing before I took him to a police
friend, Yekini, who handed him over to Ijaya with a
belief that he (Akeem) will change if he sees the way
thieves are being punished. He had been
embarrassing me. He still has a case in the Sango-Ota
division. I was arrested and detained because of him.
“When he finished his secondary school, he told me
he did not want to proceed to a higher institution. I
enrolled him as an apprentice in my carpentry
workshop and constructed a wooden shop for him
when he graduated. He removed all the planks I used
to construct the shop and sold them. Let the law take
its course.”
The spokesperson for the Ogun State Police Command,
DSP Muyiwa Adejobi, said the police were on the trail
of Ijaya and his accomplices. He added that the case
had been transferred to the command’s Special Anti-
Robbery Squad.
He said, “The suspect was arrested for robbery and
burglary. He mentioned Ijaya and some others and we
have commenced investigation. If any of them is
actually a policeman, we are going to send a signal to
the command he is attached to and he will be
arrested.”
But the Lagos State Police spokesperson, SP Dolapo
Badmos, denied that Ijaya was a serving cop in the
command.
“We don’t have a policeman bearing Festus or Ijaya
in the command,” she said.
Source: Punch
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