Oshodi: Arrest of 186 hoodlums sparks controversy

A cross section of the suspects.

A taskforce is set to prosecute scores of people arrested in the night, OLALEYE ALUKO writes

Jamiu Momodu did not think twice before jumping over a tall secondary school fence. The 65-year-old commercial driver landed in a small bush and hid himself until he was sure that his pursuers had given up on him. This was about 1.30am on Friday, April 11, 2014.

Momodu, an inter-state driver from Ilesa in Osun State, was one of the few ‘lucky’ people at the Oshodi Park who escaped a raid by the Lagos State Environmental and Special Offences (Enforcement) Unit in the early hours of the day.

The midnight patrol  that lasted for more than two hours saw 206 suspected hoodlums land behind the bars at the unit’s office in Alausa, Ikeja. However, after a screening exercise, the number was reduced to 186 the same day.

But as of Monday morning, relatives were still trooping to the office to demand the release of their alleged relatives or their co-workers, who have now been categorised as hodlums.

In an interview with our corresondent on Sunday evening, Momodu, otherwise known as ‘Baba Ibeji’, noted that the so-called hoodlums are fellow commercial drivers and stranded passengers.

“I was in the park that morning. I just returned from a trip to Ilesa, and got to Oshodi by 1am after enduring several hours of traffic. I was eating in the bus, and preparing to sleep as well. This is the custom for all of us inter-state drivers, who cannot go home because our places are far,” he said.

He added that he had scarcely started eating when the taskforce officials, numbering over 50, stormed the park in full force and began to beat whoever they saw without any interrogation.

“We quickly abandoned our buses and ran. Sincerely, we were surprised how taskforce officials would storm our park and raid all of us as hoodlums. Unfortunately, they ran after us, and took away some drivers. Their reason was simply that we were hoodlums.”

Another eyewitness, Mr. Babatope Quadri, claimed, some of the taskforce officials on Friday night were already drunk, and assaulted commercial drivers and stranded passengers who were only passing the night calmly in their buses.

“They smashed the window of a commercial bus, and they would not even look at your driver’s licence or any other documents you tendered. We really want government to put moderation into these things so that the real hoodlums would not be spared while commercial drivers and their passengers will then be maltreated,” he said.

Other people,  including passengers and traders in the park, who spoke to this correspondent on condition of anonymity, claimed that the taskforce officials had made it a custom in Oshodi to raid motorists, so that they could extort om them.

They added that while they agreed that there were touts and hoodlums in some parts of Oshodi, it was frustrating that the taskforce had concentrated only on the park, and continually arrested mostly innocent drivers, passengers and others.

Another witness, who had once spent about a month in taskforce cell, Mr. Kayode Daisi, said some passengers either with big luggage, or travelling to distant cities, were usually advised by motorists to pass the night in the park for safety reasons. But a few of them were allegedly raided on Friday morning.

“They wasted the foods and drinks of some traders. They went after drivers who were already sleeping inside their buses. This is the height of an unfair treatment,” Daisi said.

Reacting to the allegations, the unit Chairman, Mr. Bayo Sulaiman, a Chief Superintendent of Police,  said they were untrue.

He noted, “People have the right to react to actions of security operatives, but they must understand what the law says as well. All of us are aware what Oshodi was before, and what it is now, but some hoodlums are trying to turn it back to the former state.

“On the issue of drivers and passengers sleeping in buses inside parks, what the law says is that motorparks are not meant for anybody to sleep, so nobody can tell us they were sleeping inside buses and were arrested. We knew where we raided in Oshodi.”

The chairman further noted that whenever the taskforce had cause to raid innocent people like commercial drivers, they would ask for the driver’s licences, and where such ware provided, would let them go, free of charge.

“Our screening exercise is transparent, not inside anybody’s office. It is done in the open where all their relatives and people can see. The people talking apparently did not know what is happening and have not even been to our office.”

“The concentration on Oshodi is because it is the place where we have the greatest number of hoodlums. We go to Obalende, but we don’t get such number,” he said.

On the issue of extortion, he  said  some motorists who ignorantly paid lawyers to process their release, or who paid fines awarded by the court would still claim that they were being charged by the unit.

About week earlier, some 118 people were raided in Oshodi, and are still being kept in the task force’s cell.  Among the large number arrested on Friday were under-age children numbering about 30. But the taskforce chairman noted that the children would be taken to the state correctional centre, while the hoodlums would be charged to court very soon.