Vehicles seized by cops found in Ogun estate after According to report

Three Ford caravan buses owned by a retired Nigeria Customs Service officer, Akeem Sanyaolu, said to have been seized by officers of the Nigeria Police Force have been found in the OPIC Estate area of Ogun State.

According to Metro reports that Sanyaolu had raised the alarm over alleged harassment and unlawful seizure of property by officers from the Zone 2 headquarters covering Lagos and Ogun states.

Sanyaolu, who spoke with According to Metro on Monday, October 21, had said he was on a trip outside Lagos on February 5, 2020, when the officers stormed his premises, went straight to where he parked his three Ford caravan buses and drove them away.

According to him, the officers who also carted away some documents from his home, carried out the operation without a warrant or court order.

He added that the officers claimed they were acting on a petition against him but failed to provide a copy of the petition.

According to him, the three Ford caravan buses and other seized items remained unreleased four years later, despite his repeated efforts to recover them.

His lawyer, Adebayo Adekoya, however, alleged that the vehicles were released to the purported complainant’s lawyer on bond.

According to him, the officers were unable to provide the vehicles despite being released on bond.

Speaking to our correspondent on Monday,  Sanyaolu said the buses were recovered from the OPIC Estate in an operation carried out by a new team of police officers led by one Jumain of Zone 2.

According to him, the buses were repainted and hidden in a remote part of the estate.

He said, “After the AIG in charge of Zone 2 became aware of my plight, he took up the case. I was later called on Saturday, November 9, and notified that a bus that looked like the one I had been looking for was found somewhere in the OPIC Estate. After I checked,  I discovered it was repainted but a certain number written on it was how I got to know it was my bus. On Thursday, we got a clearance from the Ogun State Police Command and the new team of police officers led by the IPO identified as Jumian went to the estate. On getting there, they called the estate chairman who granted them entry. They searched and discovered the three buses being parked in a remote part of the estate.”

Meanwhile, in a tragic turn of events, Sanyaolu said his wife, Kehinde, developed a high blood pressure and died on the day the buses were recovered.

According to him, the circumstances that led to the removal of the vehicles from their home had impacted the wife’s health as residents assumed they had stolen them.

He said, “My wife had been following the process of getting the vehicles back and this was because people in our neighbourhood thought the buses were stolen with the way the police officers came and started shouting that they were stolen.”

My wife felt embarrassed and since that day, she lived with the humiliation. So, the day they asked us to make the payment for a towing van to move them, my wife was telling me to quickly make the payment. It was in the process that she developed BP and we had to quickly rush her to the hospital before she later died on Friday.”

An agent, Wale Fasanmi, who worked for Sanyaolu and was also part of the police team that visited the estate, said some properties in the buses were looted.

Fasanmi, who spoke to our correspondent on Monday, added that a resident in the estate said no one could identify the person who brought vehicles into the estate.

“We saw the buses at three different locations in the estate. When we checked inside, I discovered all the things we bought, including the appliances we put in the vehicles, had been removed. Some customs documents we kept in them were also missing. It was during the process of trying to tow them that a landlord in the estate approached us and said residents had been looking for the owner of the buses because they had been parked there for a long time. The man was happy that the police came to remove the buses from the estate and bought water for some of us.”

It was gathered that the vehicles were moved to Zone 2 in the Onikan area of Lagos State.

The spokesperson for Zone 2, Ayuba Umma, could not be reached for a reaction as her telephone line did not connect. A text message sent to her on Monday had yet to be replied to as of the time this report was filed.