The Human Rights Monitoring Agenda (HURMA), a non-governmental organisation, has accused men of the Nigerian Police and specifically the International Police Force Criminal Investigation Department Annex, Alagbon, Lagos, and its Headquarters in Abuja, of harassing a United Kingdom-based Nigerian businessman, Mr. Yinusa Owolabi, and extorting him of huge sums of money running to hundreds of thousands of naira.

In a petition addressed to the office of the Inspector General of Police and signed by one of its legal officers, Mr. Lekan Alabi, HURMA alleges the Police of framing up Mr. Owolabi in a matter that is already reported at the Birmingham Police Station, UK, and referenced 205W158583E16.

According to the petition, copies of which were sent to the offices of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, the Police Service Commission, National Human Rights Commission, Nigerian Bar Association, among others, a Nigerian-based businessman, Mr. Benjamin Olowodola, was fingered of being behind what it described as high level of rights abuse and illegality.

Giving the background into the matter, HURMA explained that Olowodola had visited Birmingham in August, 2016, to purchase generators valued at £42,000 from Eagle Generators Limited, a firm owned by a man identified simply as Nasir, and consulted Owolabi’s company, Oshramon Ventures Limited, to provide a 40ft container to cargo the generators.

The petition reads in part; “On August 15, Owolabi accepted to cargo the generator at an agreed price and sent an empty 40ft container to the premises of Eagle Generator Limited in Birmingham for onward delivery to the seaport. But the Eagle Generator Limited failed to load the generator into the container between the hours of 11:30am and 1:30pm as agreed by the parties and this necessitated the driver of the truck to leave the empty container behind so that it could be loaded at the seller’s convenient time and that the truck would return the following morning to carry it to the port.

“However, when the driver returned to the Eagle Generators Limited the following day, he found out the container was missing and informed his boss, Mr. Yinusa Owolabi of the development. While Nasir reported the matter at Birmingham Police Station, Owolabi did same at Stratford Police Station close to his office in UK. He also took Olowodola to the Stratford Police Station to report but the officer in charge of the matter noticed same had earlier been reported in Birmingham and transferred the information provided by the two complainants to the Birmingham Station that is close to the scene of the incident.”

But according to the petition, while the UK Police was still on with their investigation, Owolabi visited Nigeria to attend his father’s burial in September and called on Olowodola to discuss the state of the matter as a concerned businessman. “But arriving at Olowodola’s office at Tejuosho, Yaba, Lagos, on September 27, men from INTERPOL FCIID, Alagbon Annex effected Owolabi’s arrest and detained him for an unbroken period of three days on the phantom allegation of stealing, which the accused vehemently denied.”

“While in their custody, Owolabi was told to pay the sum of £42,000, the value of the generator and his international passport and UK Residence Permit were seized from him. Having blatantly refused to pay the £42,000, your men extorted the sum of N192,000 from him before he was released on bail on September 30. He was told that based on the fact of the matter, he could not be charged for stealing as alleged by Olowodola but based on reason best known to the command, even after extorting him, his passport and Residence permit were not released to him.

“On October 5, when Owolabi went back to Alagbon to demand for his documents, he was again placed on arrest on the strength of another petition written by the same Olowodola and he was moved to Abuja Office of INTERPOL on the day of his arrest on his own expense. In Abuja, he was also released on bail having produced a reliable surety but has since been refused his documents,” the petition added.

Meanwhile, HURMA, by the petition has sought to know the rationale behind the command’s refusal to release Owolabi’s documents, and why the INTERPOL has not sent the case to the appropriate jurisdiction where the crime was allegedly committed, and why is Olowodola accusing Owolabi when the generators were not stolen from the accused’s company premises but that of Nasir.

It describes the seizure of Owolabi’s documents as an abuse of power and a blatant violation of the relevant provisions of the Constitution, and demanded that Owolabi be allowed to return to the UK where he has left his family and business for weeks. The organisation also threatened to sue the Police on the matter accusing it of abuse of Owolabi’s fundamental rights, describing the Nigerian Police Force as an epitome of corruption.