If Immanuel Ibe-Anyawu had not
hurriedly made that Facebook post from where he hid inside a toilet bank, he
might have ended up in the dungeon of the gun-wielding men of the special
anti-robbery squad (SARS).
Ibe-Anyawu’s phone was running
out of power, around 2pm on Monday, when he made a post on Facebook: “I was
accosted by SARS officers at Ago-Palace, Okota, opposite Zenith Bank. They
humiliated me and accused me of being a fraudster. Checked my documents and
found nothing, and then said I should follow them back to my office in Ikoyi to
confirm my claims. People intervened. I called the PPRO of Lagos State and he
asked to speak with them. They took the phone and seized it. They are still
holding my documents. Later one called me aside and asked me to go arrange
money. I asked for my phone to let me make a transfer to my ATM account and he
gave me. I took the phone and card and went into the bank and have gone into
hiding here. I’m updating from my hiding place. They are waiting for me by my
car. Phone battery down. Please share.”
Hours later, Ibe-Anyawu’s post
had gone viral and a couple of his friends had started calling on the police
authorities to intervene.
The victim, a writer, on Tuesday,
narrated how it all happened.
“It was past 2pm yesterday and I
was at Zenith Bank Okota Branch to submit a document prepared on my company
letterhead. I was asked to edit a part of it and resubmit. Because I wanted to
conclude the transaction same yesterday, I had to go look for a business center
around to type in the edit. Across the bank was one and, as I walked towards
it, a young, scruffy-looking man accosted me, saying he was a police officer.
His superiors wanted to see me inside a bus waiting around, he said. He was
slightly bearded and on mufti, so I was skeptical. I asked for his ID card and
he unhooked it from his waist and showed me. The prints were tiny and blurred,
so I reached out to collect it and read properly. ‘So you want to snatch my ID
card,’ he shouted.
“He took from me the
PLANEX-branded envelope containing plain letterheads and other documents, and
walked towards the bus, asking me to come along. Right away I made a call to my
brother, Ekene Okoro, and briefed him. By the time I got to the bus, the story
had changed: that I snatched his ID card from him. They were about 7 armed men,
and one of them started interrogating me. Why did I choose to use this branch
of Zenith Bank instead of the one close to my office in Ikoyi? Where is the
other director of PLANEX? Why was the document I was to edit not stamped with
my company stamp? Dismissing all my answers, he said they would take me to my
office in Ikoyi to confirm. That he knew people on that street and had just
spoken to them, and they couldn’t identify me. Speak to my office landlady, I
said. He ignored me.
“At that point, I stepped aside
and called the Lagos PPRO and narrated my experience. He asked me to pass on
the phone to them and they took the phone from me, cut the call, and seized the
phone. I became scared and started inviting passers-by into the argument and
people gathered. One man intervened and begged them a lot and they calmed down,
though insisting that they would still take me away anyway. Then they asked to
search my car, parked outside the bank premises and I let them. Finding
nothing, they took my ID card and demanded my car key and car documents. I had
to corner their leader to a side and beg him, telling him he was like a father
to me and should appeal to his men. His men were almost going violent but he
kept calming them down. He told me to go arrange some money and I told him I
needed the phone to transfer money from the corporate account to my ATM
account. I needed the car key too to get the ATM card. On my way to the ATM, the
one who arrested me asked me how much I was going to withdraw. I told him
N5,000 and he flared up.”
Ibe-Anyawu, instead of returning
to the policemen went into the bank, entered the toilet and hid for hours.
The bank was going to close, and
he had thought the SARS officers would have left.
“The bank policeman said I should
leave the bank, that the bank was not the place for people to hide. So he eased
me out of the bank and, outside where my car was parked, I noticed the number
plates had been taken away. The SARS bus was no longer around so I assumed they
had left,” he explained.
“I got into my car and plugged my
phone desperate to reach people. As soon as I started the car and moved, the
SARS bus came from nowhere and double-crossed me. I turned swiftly facing the
bank gate and blocking it, hooting crazily to draw attention and for the bank
security to let me in. The bank security, on the order of their skeptical
policeman, refused me entry, leaving me out for SARS to devour. It is a branch
I have frequented for over 10 years, visiting there almost weekly. SARS people
jumped out of their bus and started banging on my car windows. One attempted to
puncture the tyre but that superior asked him not to. My phone was still yet to
come on, heightening my fear. It was the longest moment of my life, as I was
surrounded by 7 armed policemen who had patiently waited for me for over 2
hours. They ordered me to wind down but I wouldn’t and a crowd began to gather.
They stepped aside, speaking to the bank policeman. The bank policeman later
came to me and asked me to wind down, that he had spoken to them, and that I
should leave even outside the bank premises where all this was happening. The
management had asked him to chase me away, he said, adding that the bank was not
the place for me. Shouting through shut windows, I pleaded with him to let my
phone come on so help could reach me. He threatened to use force on me if I
didn’t leave that very minute. I steered out of the gate and parked in the
outside parking lot, still locked up in the car.
“They came back to me again,
SARS, asking me to wind down, and I pretended to be making a phone call. One
was impatient and wanted to smash the glass. Their superior who had been soft
all along got angry and dumped the number plates and documents on my bonnet and
stormed out. The others followed him, entered their bus, and they drove ahead
and waited. I was scared that they were still waiting along the same road I was
to take, so I remained in the car. The bank policeman came back again, fuming,
banging on the car and urging me to leave. I had to take the opposite direction
amid a slow-moving traffic, driving insanely cutting through the traffic until
I found a free road which was in the opposite direction to my house. I fled, literally.”
The erring police officers have,
reportedly, been arrested.
But, Chike Oti, the Lagos command
police public relations officer could not immediately confirm this when we
reached out to him. “Please call me back,” he told our correspondent.
However, Ibe-Anyawu said he has
been called by the police authorities to come and identify the men who harassed
him. “I am on my way to the Lagos police command in Ikeja. I was called that
the men are in custody and I should come and identify them,” he said on
Tuesday.
In December, 2017, Nigerians
started a campaign to end SARS and police brutality.
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