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Police brutalise journalist in Ondo

By Oluwaseun Akingboye, Akure.
04 June 2015   |   2:26 am
MEN of the Nigeria Police Force, Yaba Divisional Police Station, Ondo on Tuesday beat a journalist to comatose for allegedly challenging a police patrol vehicle, which was parked in the middle of the major road in the community.
Victor Akinkolue

Victor Akinkolue

MEN of the Nigeria Police Force, Yaba Divisional Police Station, Ondo on Tuesday beat a journalist to comatose for allegedly challenging a police patrol vehicle, which was parked in the middle of the major road in the community.

The brutalised victim, Mr. Victor Akinkuolie, a journalist reporting for the state-owned Hope Newspaper, had been on the run and under cover for a story, which he claimed he wrote a while ago.

Akinkuolie, who is currently receiving treatment in a clinic located within the premises of Yaba Police Station in Ondo town, said he went out in the morning only to see the newly-distributed patrol vehicle of the station parked and blocking the major highway.

The journalist said he immediately turned his vehicle and took another road, but the police officers later trailed him to Idi-ishin area in the town, where he was ordered by the police to come out of his vehicle.

He added that immediately he alighted, the police officers, five in number, beat him into comatose and it took the intervention of some newspaper vendors in the area, who were watching, to come to his rescue.

The Guardian learnt that the situation eventually took another dimension when some commercial motorcyclists in the community stormed the scene to protest the maltreatment and intimidation of the journalists by the police.

Speaking on the incident, a human rights activist in the community and an avant-garde of the Defence for Yoruba Peoples Right (DYPR), Otunba Muyideen Olamoyegun, frowned at the incident and decried the impunity meted on the citizenry by the police.

The journalist said he immediately turned his vehicle and took another road, but the police officers later trailed him to Idi-ishin area in the town, where he was ordered by the police to come out of his vehicle.

He urged the Nigeria Police Force to caution its officers on the recurrent breach of the fundamental human rights of the people, whom they are bound by oath of civil allegiance to protect.

It was learnt that the Area Commander in charge of Ondo Area Command, Mr Nosa Osakwe, was not in the station when the incident happened, but the Area Crime Officer (ACO) and Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), Mr. Tijani Tajudeen, ordered that he should be rushed to a clinic located within the station.

He promised to investigate the matter and ensure that appropriate action was taken on the matter and, in a telephone conversation, the State Police Public Relations Officer, Wole Ogodo mentioned that the case would be resolved. —

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