The police did not mention the number of the officers arrested in connection with the matter but a photograph posted on X indicated there were five of them.
The police in Rivers State, South-south Nigeria, say they have arrested some officers who allegedly kidnapped and extorted a resident in Port Harcourt.
How it happened
On 8 September, a social media user, Uche Okoye, uploaded a video clip of a young man on his X handle (formerly Twitter).
The young man, simply identified as 'Kay Persona,' was heard in the clip narrating how some police officers allegedly kidnapped, locked him up in a police cell and forced him to pay a sum of money before being released.
Narrating his experience in the hands of the officers, Mr Persona man said the officers, who were armed and dressed in ash and blue police camouflage, had intercepted a bolt vehicle he was riding in on a Saturday in September.
The young man said the incident happened around Rumuokwuta in Port Harcourt, shortly after they had passed a police checkpoint without being stopped.
He said the officers, numbering about 10, arrived in a pickup van and asked him to come down from the vehicle, but immediately dragged him down.
"It was utterly embarrassing because I felt like a criminal," he said.
Some of the officers, according to him, immediately jumped into his vehicle and asked his driver to follow their van to their facility without informing him of his offence or responding to his enquiries.
He tried to make a phone call but was stopped by the officers, which prompted him to ask the bolt driver to stop the vehicle.
He said one of the officers informed him that the vehicle was under surveillance and that they had been tracking it.
The officer subsequently told him to calmly follow them to their facility.
At the Police Intelligence and Surveillance Unit, Ogbunabali, where he was taken to, the officers asked him to pay the bolt driver so that he could go, despite claiming they were tracking the vehicle.
But he declined. The officers later took him into their facility.
"At the end of the day, I got into the station. There was no processing (documentation) at the counter. We went straight into an office and they told me to take off my jewellery and my wristwatch," he said.
Aside from him, there were other boys also picked up by the officers from different locations in the area.
"They took us somewhere and sat us on the floor. From there, they moved into a cell. I spent almost five hours inside the cell," he said.
After checking his social media handles, emails and phones without finding anything incriminating, he was released at about 12 a.m. the following Sunday.
"I spent a night at the police cell for doing absolutely nothing. There was no allegation."
But because it was late, the officers returned him to the cell, with a promise to release him in the morning.
"The following morning, the police officers told me that I have to pay N150,000," he said.
He noted that, at that point, he could not do anything because nobody knew he was being detained at the facility.
"So, I had to negotiate with the police officers to pay what I will call ransom. I ended up withdrawing N50,000 and paid them cash because they refused to accept a bank transfer to avoid a trace," he narrated.
Arrest of the officers
In a post via their verified X handle on Tuesday, the police in Rivers State said they had identified and arrested the officers involved in the alleged extortion and kidnap of the young man.
"...The command also wants to plead with the general public to synergise with us in the fight against crime," the police wrote on the microblogging site.
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The police did not mention the number of the officers arrested in connection with the matter but a photograph posted on X indicated they were five of them.
Not the first time
The latest incident occurred less than three weeks after the police arrested four officers who allegedly assaulted a traveller in the state.
A police officer who was filmed slapping a motorist in the Emouha area of the state was demoted in April.
The Emouha incident occurred a few days after Ubi Ebri, another officer, allegedly shot dead a young man in the neighbouring Delta State for reportedly refusing to give a N100 bribe.
PREMIUM TIMES reported how youths in Delta State protested with the victim's corpse along major roads in Asaba.
Mr Ebri, the officer, was immediately arrested, dismissed from service and later arraigned.
