Rape, Sex Scandal Rocks Abeokuta Special Police Unit

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A special police outfit, the Zonal Intervention Squad (ZIS), an arm of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) based in Abeokuta, Ogun State, is enmeshed in controversy as the wife of a suspect being investigated by its operatives alleged that one of them took advantage of the investigation to rape her twice in her home at gunpoint, reports KUNLE AKINRINADE.

AN air of indictment hangs over a special police
outfit, the Zonal Intervention Squad (ZIS), in Abeokuta, Ogun State
capital, four years after it was created to tackle crimes and
lawlessness in the state. A sergeant attached to the squad is fingered
in the rape of the wife of a suspect the squad was investigating for
alleged inter-state robbery and fraudulent practices.

The Police
Sergeant (names withheld), a special detective in charge of tracking
criminals and their accomplices, is accused by the suspect’s wife,
Oluwakemi (surname withheld), of raping her twice at gunpoint in her
home in Abeokuta.

The woman, who said she was compelled to flee
the country shortly after the police sergeant allegedly raped her the
second time, said she decided to open up, following alleged threats by
the errant policeman to deal with her if she spills the bean on their
encounters.

The 39-year-old woman said she was yet to overcome the trauma she went through at the hands of the Police Sergeant.

Reliving
her ordeal in a conversation with our correspondent, Oluwakemi, the
victim of the alleged rape, opted to speak in Yoruba “so that my
explanation will be clear to you.”

She said: “In 2015, I started working (as sales supervisor) at a lounge inside the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abeokuta. By

early 2016, I started receiving calls from a stranger, and I told my husband about it.

“I
told my husband that the caller identified himself to me and said that
he wanted to find out some things about him (husband). My husband does
not live with me because he has other wives, but he visits regularly. My
husband said I should ask him to come to my place of work if he needed
any information. The policeman called me again and I told him to come
over to where I was working if he had anything to ask me about my
husband.

“When he showed up, he identified himself as an
operative of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) attached to ZIS. He
started saying that he would have disgraced and brutalised me if I was
not a woman. He said he had been trailing one Ibrahim and found my GSM
number on his mobile telephone.

“I responded by telling him that
the person he had just mentioned is my husband. Then he said my husband
was a robber and he was trying to track him. I told him that my husband
is not a robber but a printer and businessman whose printing press is
located in Ago Iwoye area of Ogun State, where he also has another wife
that operates a big shop. He said he would need my cooperation to get to
my husband, but I told him that my husband was not a criminal and that
he should not be disturbing me.

”The people around us did not
know what was going on because the conversation was just between us. He
tried to intimidate me by saying that I was once arrested when my
husband was being trailed by the police. But I told him that the case he
was talking about was about a disagreement my husband had with his
business partners over money and that I was eventually released. After
that, he left.”

Oluwakemi said he thought the matter had ended
only to realise later that she was gravely mistaken, as the Police
Sergeant, according to her, showed up again a few weeks later. This
time, however, he was not there to ask Oluwakemi about her husband’s
whereabouts. He and some friends he came with, she alleged, simply
enjoyed themselves at the lounge and asked her to pick the bill.

She
said: “He returned a few weeks later with some of his friends and
bought a lot of drinks and refreshments without paying a dime. He simply
dropped the bill on me. I could not refuse it because he is a
policeman.

“A few months later, I left the employ

of the
lounge to concentrate on my small business at Ijemo in Abeokuta. I guess
he went to my former place of work but he was told that I had resigned.
He called me on my mobile phone and accused me of running away, saying
that he had information on my shop and residence.

“I was shocked
the day he showed up at my shop. He took some drinks and other
provisions without paying a dime. He also visited my shop at other
times, taking items away without paying a dime. I could not prevent him
from taking the items away because I was hapless and there was no one I
could call to fight for me since he is a policeman.’’

Fresh ordeal

Oluwakemi
alleged that her ordeal at the hand of the Police Sergeant assumed a
different dimension when he allegedly visited her residence when her
children had gone to school and other neighbours had gone out, and raped
her at gunpoint.

She said: ”I was at home in my residence at Oke
Ejigbo area of Abeokuta in October 2017 when I was told that someone
was looking for me. My children had just left for school and I was not
expecting any visitor. I was shocked when I opened the door to our
apartment only to find the policeman standing at my door.

“I
asked him why he had to trail me to my residence when I was not a
criminal. I also reminded him that I had told him where my husband
lived. He asked me to cooperate with him to arrest my husband, promising
to share the money he would extort from him with me.

”I told
him that if my husband was that rich, there would have been no need for
me to work as hard as I was doing or obtain a loan from a micro-credit
organisation called LAPO for my business. He then explained that his
team had located my husband’s printing press and residence in Ago Iwoye
but had not been able to apprehend him. He said the only thing that
could make him leave me and my husband alone was for him to sleep with
me, but I declined.

“I could not accede to his demand for sex
because I am a decent and hardworking housewife. I told him that since
he had found my husband’s business address and residence, he did not
need to come to me again, not to talk of demanding an affair with me.
But he pulled up his shirt to show me his pistol and forcibly slept with
me.

“I told my husband about what the policeman had done to me
and he was very angry. In early February 2018, he again visited my
residence. He came in an ash coloured Camry car at about 11 am and raped
me at gunpoint. I could not raise the alarm because he was usually
armed with a pistol.”

Realising that she was allegedly being
turned into a sex machine by the policeman, Oluwakemi said she was left
with no choice but to move out of the house a few days after she was
allegedly raped the second time.

”He raped me because he was armed and the house I lived in then was

usually
deserted in the morning. The only person around was our landlady, who
is physically challenged. It was for this reason that I moved out of the
building a few days later before I left for Saudi Arabia in June, 2018,
courtesy of my husband.

”I came to Saudi Arabia on June 8, 2018
and he arrested my husband a few days later and started threatening me
with messages on IMO (a phone application), warning that I risked arrest
if I ventured to return to the country. I had to ask my boss in Saudi
Arabia to get me a new mobile phone in order to prevent him from sending
me further threats.

”My husband was hard up at the time he was
being hunted by the police simply because he stood surety for someone
that later jumped bail. He actually stood surety for one of his friends,
who was remanded in prison pending the perfection of his bail. It was
from there that the police started their problem with him, saying that
he is a robber.

“My husband is not a robber. He has receipts for
all the items in his possession, including his vehicles. He would buy
cars, use and resell them, and none of those who bought cars from him
has ever complained that he sold stolen cars to them or that someone
complained to the police that my husband stole their car.”

Our
correspondent contacted the spokesperson of Zone 2 Police Headquarters,
Ms Dolapo Badmus, but she said she was unaware of a petition Oluwakemi’s
husband claimed to have submitte

d to the zonal police
headquarters over the matter and sundry allegations. On her request, a
detailed enquiry was forwarded to her whatsApp platform and short
message service, but she has since not reverted to our correspondent,
and did not also answer the calls our correspondent placed to her mobile
phone penultimate Saturday.

Allegations baseless, contrived, says Police Sergeant

Our
correspondent sought the reaction of the Police Sergeant at the centre
of the controversy, but he denied the rape allegation, saying that it
was contrived by the woman and her husband in their bid to escape
justice.

He said: ”Actually, I should not be the one to respond
(to the allegations). A petition had been submitted at the Force
Headquarters regarding this matter, and it is currently being
investigated. Even our Zonal Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Ms
Badmus, is in the know of the case and she has reverted to your office
on this matter.”

Told by our correspondent that Ms Badmus was yet
to respond to our enquiries on the matter, the Police Sergeant asked:
”Did the woman (Oluwakemi) speak with you directly?”

“Yes, she spoke to me directly from her base in Saudi Arabia,” said our correspondent.

Then
the Police Sergeant said: ”The woman in question (Oluwakemi) was out of
the country before her husband was arrested. What really happened was
that we had been looking

for a man called Dele, who specialised in using master keys to steal cars from where they were parked.

“Along
the line, we arrested one Godwin in Ughelli, Delta State, during which
more than 30 vehicles were recovered in the operation. It was discovered
that some of the vehicles were allegedly given to Ibrahim (Oluwakemi’s
husband).

“But we could not arrest him, so we tracked his
(mobile) phone and got his wife’s number, through which we tried to get
her husband. That was why I trailed her to where she was working.

“She
admitted that Ibrahim was her husband but that they were no longer
together because he had abandoned her. Even the woman admitted that she
was arrested and detained at the state police headquarters in Eleweran,
Abeokuta, and subsequently charged to a court when her husband was
accused of hijacking a truck.

“She also said that she was
prosecuted because her husband transferred part of the proceeds of the
loot to her bank account. Hence, she agreed to cooperate with us because
she said that she didn’t want to suffer again for a crime she didn’t
commit. So, I said if she wanted us to help her, she should also help
us, and we started calling her.

“I remember that there was one
particular Sunday when she said Ibrahim would be in Ijebu, and we even
trailed their first daughter to the house she claimed to be her
husband’s residence. But along the line, I guess they reconciled and she
stopped cooperating with us.

“When I could not reach the woman
any longer, we started using our informant in Ijebu to get him(her
husband). Then her husband called me after we arrested his second wife
and one of his aides who was working with him to operate a wonder bank,
saying that all my discussion with his first wife had been relayed to
him. He then told me that his wife was no longer in the country.

“In
fact, three days after we arrested Ibrahim, his wife (Oluwakemi) called
me on the phone with an international number, saying that her husband
was not a robber but a businessman. But I asked her not to call my phone
number anymore.

”Before we arrested Ibrahim, he had written a
petition against us, and the matter was referred to the Force Criminal
Investigation Department (FCID), Alagbon, Lagos. I am not the one
investigating the case. There is an IPO, but my responsibility is to
track suspects.

”Let her bring out the proof that I raped her, if
it is by word of mouth or messages. You are free to carry out checks
whether I carry pistol around as official rifle. Where did she make a
report when I allegedly raped her? The reason she travelled abroad is
because her husband knew that we could only get him through the woman.

“She
complained that her husband was no longer visiting her and took my team
to Ago Iwoye where her husband was living with his second wife. She
took us to the shop her husband was using (as printing press) and the
second wife’s shop. May be she made up with her husband or probably he
gave her some money and she decided to change her mind.

“Nobody
forced her when we discovered that we could no longer get her husband
through her. Instead, we explored other options to arrest her husband.
We tracked her husband to Ibadan through one of his employees that ran
his wonder bank in Ibadan where I think he has another wife.

”I
never visited her residence at Oke Ejigbo in Abeokuta. She is not my
taste. Why would I rape someone at gunpoint? I am a professional and
trained police officer. I wouldn’t do that. My visits to her were to get
her husband through her; nothing more.

”After we arrested the
said Godwin at Ughelli, Delta State, he mentioned Rasheed and one Dele.
Ask Ibrahim how he got his cars. It was through Dele. He claimed he

didn’t follow the suspects to the scene of robbery, but he got his cars from robbers.

“He
wrote a statement to that effect. Even though he claimed he was not at
the scene of the robbery, he bought the stolen cars and was asked to
produce the said Dele; Dele had been arrested several times for
robbery.”

Informed about the Police Sergeant’s response to her
allegations, Oluwakemi said she was more than ready to confront him face
to face, if the latter insisted that he never came to her residence at
Oke Ejigbo to rape her.

She said: ”I am crying out now to reveal
what he did to me. If I had reported the matter to the police, there
was the tendency that it would not see the light of day. You know he is a
SARS operative, and with the way they usually terrify people, I fear
for my life because of the way they might harass me. He cannot say it in
my presence that he did not visit my residence or rape me twice.

”As
to whether I took them to Ago Iwoye to arrest my husband, that is not
true. I only told him where my husband lives. I did not take him to my
husband’s residence, neither did I accompany him to Ago Iwoye to arrest
my husband. It was even he who told me on the phone that he had visited
my husband’s residence. I even sent some of the messages he sent to me
to my husband.’’

Source:- Nairaland Forum

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