DPO steps aside over alleged N2m bribe in Lagos
… Paramount ruler reportedly seeks release of suspected robbers
CITIZENS COMPASS —Following the alleged N2m bribery allegation, Lagos State Commissioner of Police, CP Adegoke Fayoade, on Monday, January 29, 2024, ordered the Divisional Police Officer((DPO), Epe Division, CSP, Godwin Okoruwa, to step aside from his position.
This was disclosed by the spokesman, of Lagos State Police Command, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, on his X Handle formerly known as Twitter.
He said the DPO has been asked to step aside pending the outcome of the investigation.
According to him, “CP Adegoke Fayoade has ordered an investigation into the allegations contained in this publication.
“Pending the outcome of the investigation and on the instruction of the CP, the DPO has stepped aside.
“Meanwhile, we can confirm that the suspects were transferred to the headquarters the same day they were arrested; and there is no truth in the claim that the DPO was queried.”
The order from the CP was in response to an online publication that a paramount ruler in Epe issued an N2m cheque for the DPO to release four suspected armed robbers arrested by the Command during a Stop and Search duty.
According to the online report, the suspects were found with locally made guns cut to size and cartridges and were being grilled when the paramount ruler called the DPO that the boys arrested were not armed robbers but those working for him.
He was said to have signed an N2m cheque and sent it through one of his boys to the DPO with an instruction to give N1m to the boys who arrested the suspects and the remaining N1m to the DPO.
On sighting the cheque, CSP Godwin Okoruwa reportedly called for the case file of the suspects and was about to release them when an unnamed traditional ruler in Bariga, Lagos who had been following the antics of the DPO and the Epe paramount ruler got a hint of the foregoing and alerted the Commissioner of Police Lagos State Police Command who promptly ordered that the suspects be brought to the Command Headquarters Ikeja, first thing the following morning.
The online report also claimed that the DPO had been a thorn in the flesh of one Baale Olalekan Olatunde over an age-long face-off between him and Elepe of Epe over ownership of a particular vast expanse of land.
