Afeez Mojeed, a real estate manager and haulage consultant, has narrated his ordeal in the hands of men of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), who were supervised by Abba Kyari, the then Officer-in-Charge, OC of the unit.
The victim told the Lagos Judicial Panel on Saturday how SARS officers forced him to wire a sum of N41 million to one Edward Obinna and unlawfully collected other sums from him on different occasions.
Mr Mojeed, 38, was accosted at his residence at Victory Estate, Ajah, on October 18, 2014, and was 32 years at the time of the arrest.
“I was in my apartment around 8-9 p.m. in my sitting room with my 2-year-old son and my mother in law watching the TV. My wife was in the kitchen cooking, she was five-month pregnant
“I heard a big bang on my door with a voice saying open this door or I bring down the door,” Mr Mojeed told the panel.
He said he thought it was armed robbers but summoned courage and opened the door, only to see four armed men in mufti, who pounced on him the moment he opened the door.
Confused about what the issue was, Mr Mojeed said the men beat him to the ground and his pregnant wife who was shouting and asking what the problem was, was slapped countless times.
“They chained my legs on the floor and handcuffed my both hands behind. In the process of doing that, one of the men pulled my wedding ring from my finger and collected Tissot wristwatch from my table. They also collected my wife’s wedding rings with several slaps.
“They went to my room, approached my cupboard, they picked the sum of N280, 000 and ransacked all aspects of my house,” he told the panel.
Mr Mojeed said the armed men, whose identities were unknown at the time, collected several documents from him.
These included his Zenith current account chequebook, Atm card, Diamond corporate account chequebook, four documents of landed properties, two shop documents, ID card, car documents and car key to Honda accord 2008.
He added that the men searched his car, took the sum of N50,000 from the car, took him to their Sienna car and drove off.
“They took me to Ikeja command, we got there around 11 p.m. The allegation as at then was that my car was a stolen vehicle,” he narrated.
He told the panel that he was tortured by the SARS officers till around 2 a.m. and was thereafter put in a cell.
The victim said the police came the next day to ask for the password to his phone which he gave and on seeing his alerts, they came back for him.
“They came back that I should give them the password to my personal account. They collected the atm, I gave them the wrong pin, they sent and came back, they could not cash out.
“Later that day, they pointed at Edward Obinna that I defrauded him of N97 million. Immediately I asked Mr Edward how much I defrauded him. He said he paid to my corporate account and I asked them to allow me get the bank statement to show proof.
