Lagos police, LAGESC, touts endanger lives in joint raids over facemasks, social distancing
By Police officers in Lagos and officials of the State Environmental Sanitation Corps (LAGESC), accompanied by thugs as foot soldiers, are endangering the lives of residents in their overzealous bid ‘protect’ the public against the spread of coronavirus by enforcing social distancing and use of face masks.
These officials and their foot soldiers are clamping down on residents with aggression. Random individuals alleged to have flouted the measures are lumped together by the officials, making it easier to contract and spread the coronavirus disease that they measures are meant to prevent in the first place. In most cases, the offence is bailable with a bribe to the officers who themselves are neither using facemasks nor maintaining social distancing.
This reporter recently witnessed and recorded what initially appeared to be a raid against criminals but turned out to be an attempt to even safety guidelines for preventing coronavirus spread. It involved a pregnant woman, who was using a facemask, by the way. She was dragged along with her husband by armed police officers for allegedly failing to use facemasks. The pregnant woman explained that their car was parked a few metres away, with their young children left alone inside, as she had to urgently find a restroom in a restaurant across the road to ease herself
The police officers, however, could not be bothered about the woman’s discomfort but instead assaulted her physically and verbally.
“Are you mad? Are you crazy?” yelled one of the police officers at intervals. “God will punish you!”
Ignoring her pleas, another officer standing beside the vehicle said, “Bring money and go!”
The couple turned out to be two out of dozens of people arrested near Computer Village, Ikeja, in what turned out to be a raid by men of the Nigerian Police, LAGESC, and thugs. Many of those arrested were thrown inside a ‘Black Maria’ belonging to LAGESC.
The scene did not start with the couple. It started with the armed police officers running after random individuals on the road, an act that made people scamper in different directions, as they were unsure of what was actually happening. The couple would probably have run too without knowing what they were running from if the woman was not pregnant.
In footage recorded at the scene of the chaos led by police officers, mostly male victims ran away from the commotion for offences they were yet to know and did not want to find out. An unfortunate prey would later stumble twice and eventually fall, enabling one of the raiding officers to pounce on him. Dragging him away by his trousers, he kept repeating, “What did I do?”, to which he got no response.
The intensified raids in recent weeks have endangered the lives of Lagos residents and increasing the risk of contracting and spreading the coronavirus as disregard for the health status of those arrested means entire trucks are filled to the brim with supposed defaulters. As police officers and LAGESC personnel claim to be enforcing social distancing and facemask requirements, those arrested are clustered together in violation of social distancing rules. More so, those without facemasks are likely to either infect others or be infected. The officers do not appear to be bothered, as many of the arrests involve aggressive manhandling, and detainees equally cramped in the patrol vehicle with them.
About a week before the scene earlier described, this reporter had also captured on tape as at least eight officers of LAGESC along with the illegal street urchins who work with them, assaulted and bundled a man into one of their infamous orange and green painted ‘Black Marias’. While conversations at the scene in the same Computer Village in Ikeja suggested this was for not using a facemask, the footage recorded by this reporter showed he had one on.
A person in mufti suspected to be one of the thugs working with the LAGESC personnel would later threaten this reporter with assault and detention for making a recording of what transpired at the scene.
Suspecting the fellow was a thug, this reporter asked to see his identification, which he refused. Even if it had been produced, as previously observed, Identification Cards with Lagos State Government logos are noted to be routinely printed with ‘taskforce’ inscribed somewhere, whereas, such individuals actually have no formal engagement with government.
A certain Steven Luther, who identified himself as the leader of the team, would later intervene, saying he authorised the action carried out. Drawing his attention to the fact that the suspected thug was not a government employee, Luther dismissed this, simply saying, he authorised whatever was carried out and he is a staff of LAGESC, which is all that matters.
At another entrance leading to the market, another team was seen where a certain Yekinni Nurudeen would later introduce himself as the district commander, Ikeja Division, LAGESC. Contradicting Luther’s claim a few minutes earlier, Nurudeen who said he was a superior officer, stated arrests were not allowed to be made because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also refuted the claim by Luther, that un-uniformed civilians who are likely thugs can be engaged to operate with the corps. However, few metres from where he addressed this reporter, the other team of LAGESC personnel, man-o-war and other different unrecognisable uniforms continued picking out passersby to physically manhandle them and throw inside the ‘Black Marias’.
Social distancing, safety, and preventing the spread of COVID-19 appears to have taken a back seat over considerations of extortions and the harassments that precede it.