Notorious Activities Of Oworonshoki Police Division -By Jamiu Towolawi

Oworonshoki Community is fast becoming the bedrock of all notorious activities ranging from Secondary School Students attacking their teachers, robbery, hoodlums/cult clashes. The most dangerous of it is the extortion of innocent citizens by the members of the Oworonshoki Police Division.

Before the arrival of the present Divisional Police Officer (DPO), precisely between January 2017 to August 2017, the then Divisional Police Officer (DPO) did a tremendous job of curtailing the activities of hoodlums and robbers by coordinating the activities of the Police Officers under her division, making sure the Community is peaceful and the right of every individual is respected and protected irrespective of social class or ethic group. She stepped on so many toes, fighting fiercely, and often declared publicly that her primary responsibility in the Community is the protection of lives and properties.

However, immediately she was transferred, Oworonshoki Community returned to its old way of notorious activities. The arrival of the present DPO has made the situation more devastating because the killings has not only increased, members of the Community are living in absolute state of fear.

For the past three months, the Oworonshoki Police Division has been constantly and consistently raiding innocent citizens at night and a bail of N10,000 will have to be paid before those arrested can be released. There was also a report of two Police Officers named Akin and Bright that robbed a commercial motorcyclist of N25,000 at night in Ekore Bus-stop Oworonshoki around June this year.

The most recent was the event of Saturday October 6, 2018 in which the DPO was alleged to have collected between N500,000 and N2,700,000 from an individual to organise a peace talk between rival cult/hoodlums gangs that have been engaging in recent killings in the Community, which was to be held at the premise of the Oworonshoki Police Division.

The peace talk broke down during the meeting and resulted into a serious clash between the two groups. They engaged themselves, shooting sporadically, brandishing cutlasses and other weapons. The clash led to mass looting of shops and valuables of passersby such as phones, cash, jewelries, among others.

Instead of going after the perpetrators, Oworonshoki Police Division resorted to raiding innocent citizens a few hours after, and a sum of N10,000 was collected from each person before they were released. It should be known to the general public that this has been the normal routine of arresting innocent cizitens for the past three months, while no single culprit has been arrested. There is also a popular opinion that the DPO is involved in a personal contribution (savings) of N500,000 monthly known as (Ajo) and for that purpose, he has divided all police officers under his division into several groups of two police officers each with the mandate/target of N5,000 daily return.

Lastly it is believed that if the appropriate authority does not address this situation urgently, Oworonshoki may completely drift into a state of anarchy because hoodlums are becoming more powerful than security operatives and the DPO and most of his boys’ primary objective is to extort members of the Community through intimidation, harassment and unlawful arrest of innocent citizens.