Nigeria: Investigation (1) - Bribery, Bail for Sale... Lagos Police Station Where Innocent Civilians Are Jailed and Criminals Are Recycled

14 October 2019

Investigative journalist FISAYO SOYOMBO spent two weeks in detention -- five days in a Police cell and eight as an inmate in Ikoyi Prison -- to track corruption in Nigeria's criminal justice system, beginning from the moment of arrest by the Police to the point of release from prison. To experience the workings of the system in its raw state, Soyombo -- adopting the pseudonym Ojo Olajumoke -- feigned an offence for which he was arrested and detained in police custody, arraigned in court and eventually remanded in Prison. In the first of this three-part series, he uncovers how the Police pervert the course of justice in their quest for ill-gotten money.

It cost only N500 for a policeman to arrest me, and N1,000 for another to hurl me into a cell. Of course, they didn't know I was a journalist. I had assumed a pseudonym and grown my hair long enough -- for 10 months -- to blend with artificial dreads. My locks were tinted in gold and almost all my facial hair removed. I cut the profile of the kind of youth the Police indiscriminately railroad into their ramshackle vans for no reason, for onward transfer to their cells. One look at me and the typical policeman would have mistaken me for a compulsive hemp smoker, an incorrigible internet fraudster or a serial drug abuser.

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