Five court officials, parading themselves as officers of Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Enforcement Agency, also known as ‘Task Force’, have been arrested.
The aim of the court officials, it is believed, was to allegedly extort and harass motorists and residents for violating the lockdown order, and not using face mask.
The suspects were arrested by the Inspector-General of Police Monitoring Unit, led by Ngozi Braide, a Chief Superintendent of Police, deployed to Lagos and Ogun states.
It was gathered that complaints on the activities of the five-man gang had reached the Lagos State Government, hence their arrest.
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Led by one Henry Akintanmi, an official of the Lagos State Special Offences (Mobile) Court, three policemen primarily assigned to ensure the safety of lives and property of the five mobile courts and magistrates in the state, were also part of the gang.
Previously involved in arresting and impounding motorcycles and tricycles in the state, their modus operandi changed, shifting their targets to motorists, after President Muhammadu Buhari imposed a lockdown on Lagos to contain spread of Coronavirus.
They also capitalised on Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s directive on the use of face mask to also extort residents.
The officials, in order to ensure the operations achieve the targeted aim, adopted Task Force enforcement style and painted their vehicles with a bold inscription of ‘Task Force’ on it and move in convoy to arrest and extort motorists that were not familiar with Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Enforcement Agency (Task Force).
The bubble burst after a woman, simply identified as Ms. Clara, was extorted for not using a face mask in Lagos State.
She gave intelligence to the IGP monitoring team, claiming that the officials who extorted her were from Lagos Task Force and appealed for an investigation.
Upon Clara’s complaint, law enforcement officers accompanied her to the Lagos State Environmental Sanitation Enforcement Agency (Task Force) headquarters in Oshodi to identify the perpetrators.
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Upon arrival, the Chairman of Lagos Task Force, CSP Olayinka Egbeyemi, denied the involvement of his officers and disclosed that since the advent of the dreaded hoodlums, ‘One Million Boys’, his personnel had been deployed to different locations to prevent any possible attack on residents.
Egbeyemi said: “We have been manning the entry points of the state during this lockdown. We have not been engaging in any enforcement in Lagos state.
“And some of the places you can find my men now are Agege, Ikorodu, Oshodi, Alakuko, Lekki-Ikoyi, and Berger end of Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
“I know that my officers were never involved in any enforcement.”
However, Clara and members of the IGP team discovered the vehicle that apprehended her within the premises of Lagos State Special Offences (Mobile) Court where the perpetrators were picked by the team.
