Heavily armed policemen stormed and shut down the Ogun digital market, causing confusion

The traders in the well-known Tarmac phone and digital market in the Panseke neighborhood of Abeokuta, Ogun State, were in disarray on Friday morning when heavily armed policemen stormed the market and demanded that they leave because there was a court order requiring them to do so.

When TheNigerian Metro visited the market, it was seen that there were many police officers present, and the vendors were hanging out close to their locked and keyed businesses.

Some of the vendors who spoke with our correspondent highlighted that there had been repeated instances of land speculators showing up and asking them to leave the market, putting their livelihoods in danger.

Akeem Oyeyemi, a trader, claimed that the police came to his stores early on Friday to eject him and his employees after handing them a court order that they were not aware of.

“What occurred was that this morning at around five in the morning, we received a call stating that roughly 200 police officers had invaded the tarmac with about 20 cars, and our chairman also advised us to begin arriving. We all congregated here and traveled to the Olubara’s palace at around 6 o’clock in the morning.

“From the palace, we returned here to meet the police and inquire as to what had occurred. When the police arrived, they displayed a court order requesting that Tarmac be locked up, but we informed them that we had not received any notice of any court orders and that we thought we should have been informed if the need to lock this facility up ever arose.

The police opened fire, forcing everyone to flee for their lives when we agreed that we should be allowed to open our stores. We had been prohibited from opening our shops up until this point, according to Oyeyemi.

Another trader, who also requested anonymity, mentioned that land speculators had a habit of showing up at the market and asking the traders to leave.

She remarked, “Some land squatters have been to this market before to beg us to leave, but we will later learn that our authorities have reached a settlement with them. The situation is worrying and it is impacting our business.

It was unable to get the chairman of the market association, Ifebola Togunwa, to respond to calls and messages left at his phone.

Omolola Odutola, the public relations officer for the Ogun State Police Command, asked our correspondent via WhatsApp if she was at the scene of the incident. Our correspondent responded in the affirmative and even sent pictures of the scene, but she had not yet responded after reading the message when we filed this report.

TheNigerianNews had reported on Wednesday that the Ogun State House of Assembly claimed that police officers in the state were conspiring with some land speculators to unlawfully arrest and jail innocent citizens.

Olakunle Oluomo, the Speaker of the Assembly, made a request to the Inspector General of Police to intervene in the unlawful arrest and detention of hundreds of state residents after noting that they were still being held in various police detention facilities at Alagbon in Lagos and the Force Headquarters in Abuja.