Date: 2017-01-12

Some workers of Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) yesterday staged a peaceful demonstration at the Ilorin International Airport over an alleged brutalization of their colleague by some mobile policemen.

The NAMA officer, Mr Ishola Yusuf Oluwafemi, was allegedly beating by the mobile policemen at the instance of their team leader simply identified as Gbadeyan, a Deputy Superintendent of Police.

The officers, said to be of Mobile Force Unit, Kulende, Ilorin, were reportedly deployed in the Airport to strength security ahead of the arrival of a top government official.

It took the intervention of the Commandant of the Mobile Force before the aggrieved NAMA staff could be pacified.

Oluwafemi, who narrated his ordeal in a chat with The Herald yesterday, alleged that the security personnel descended on him for inexplicable reason.

He alleged that the four mobile policemen, who acted on the instruction of their superior, battered him and described the incident as very strange.

Oluwafemi, an Aeronautical Information Officer with NAMA, insisted that there was justification for the attack on him and urged police authority to investigate the suspects.

"About 10am this Morning (yesterday), an officer ( of mobile police) came and knocked at my office door. He was uniform and I don't know him from anywhere. He was trying to open the door immediately he knocked. I heard the knock and I opened the door. I said Good Morning, and he said why didn't you talk to me and I asked him about what, because we never had any prior conversation nor anything before then, and I never met him before. That was the first time I was seeing him and immediately he locked the door and left.

"Some two or three minutes later, about four mobile policemen came and started saying bring him out and I asked what did I do. They said why will you talk to our oga rudely and I asked how did I talk to him because I never had any prior conversation with him before. They said you are very stupid. Who are you, why will you be talking to our oga like that. And I replied, what do you mean, in my own office? That was when I stood up.

"Before I knew what was happening, they started beating me. But he (the real officer) was outside. May be he was not satisfied with the way they were beating me, he came in and asked them to bring me out. They were all pulling me on the floor from my office to the main ground. They asked me to sit down, beating and battering on my face with their boots. And I told them to you were just being unfair to me.

"While they were doing all of that, my other colleagues were around. They were women and so they could not help the situation. All they needed to do was to raise alarm. So, they rushed to the operational area to mobilize other colleagues. When they (mobile policemen) discovered that the crowd was becoming larger, they all left.

"I went to the Airport Police Station immediately they left to make a formal report. The officers I met, told me the man involved is a superior officer. So, they cannot take my own statement. When other staff heard about it, based on my interaction with them, they said they were going to scatter the whole Airport. But because the Senate President flight was coming, their commandant (of Mopol) rushed outside. He begged me and said he didn't want me to embarrass them because of the Senate President's aircraft that was coming. That I should tell my colleagues to calm down and we should settle things amicably.

"For the sake of the Senate President and because am an indigene of Ilorin, I said don't let me be the one to embarrass him. I told my colleagues that we should give them some time. Let the Senate President's plane land and go peacefully, afterwards we will continue from there.

"After the whole thing, I had little strength and at a point I became tired and weak. My colleagues instructed the operational vehicle to take me to the hospital", he said.

When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of Kwara State Police command, DSP Okasanmi Ajayi, said he was not aware but promised to find out.