A 17-year-old boy who returned from the United States of America has been hospitalised after some police officers assaulted him in Oyo state.
It was gathered that the incident happened on December 27, 2023 in the Jogor Centre area of Ibadan, the state capital, not long after the teenager arrived Nigeria.
According to residents of Jogor, the boy whose name was not disclosed left USA for Nigeria to visit his aged grandmother only to fall victim to police brutality.
They said he was hospitalised after one of the police men slapped him during the festive period, but eyewitnesses said they could no longer keep mum over the incident, especially.
A resident, Sola Ajayi said the the boy alongside another person was on a bike around the Jogor Centre when they were stopped by some police men numbering up to five.
He said; “One of the police men was doing a video recording when the boy’s partner also began to do a video recording in case anything happened. So, before we knew it, the officers had called the Divisional Police Officer at Iyaganku Police Station.
They brought more police men. The DPO came in a Lexus 470 jeep. There were many with rifles. One of them tried to cock his gun and his magazine even fell off. They took them to the station in their vehicle where they were beaten.”
Another source said the boy and his brother who were slapped by the police men were hospitalised and had been receiving treatment.
“They called him a fraudster because his look was different from ours. They were going to ShopRite that day. It happened on our street. It was at the back of the Jogor Centre. The route they followed was a shortcut.
Please, help us in this area. Is it an offence for a grandson to come from the US to greet his grandmother? They punched the other brother. The boy had never been beaten before. Police men never beat them where they came from,” the source said.
