Eredo, Epe, Lagos natives cry out, say “police ignoring court order restraining our arrest” {THE LONG STORY}

By KEMI KASUMU

Some victims of land grabbers’ activities in Eredo, Epe, Lagos State have cried out to the Inspector General of Police, IGP Kayode Egbetokun, and, by extension, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to save their lives and properties from unlawful gun carrying land grabbers allegedly working in collaboration with DPO of Noforija Police Station, Eredo, Epe, who has now been transferred to Zone 2 in the Centre of Excellence.

Latest developments on the matter, according to sources within the affected community, showed that, while no level of authorities within the police hierarchy from Lagos to Abuja seems to have been able to tackle the excesses of these elements who come in full force for a kill, allegedly, attempts are now being made through a means believed to be unknown to the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to hide under claims of arresting the victims over a make-belief murder and seize it to silence them.

Worst, according to them, was that despite the fact the victims went to court and secured an order preventing the police or any of the related security agencies from arresting the indigenous Eredo victims of the collaborative persecution, and the court order presented to them, calls continued to fly from both Abuja to one of the allegedly targeted victims and another set of calls from the then DPO (names withheld), said to have now been transferred to Zone 2 Lagos Command of the Nigerian Police Force incessantly threatening, allegedly, the community leaders to either come by themselves to Zone 2 or the police operatives from the zonal headquarters would invade the community and make handful of arrests.

Investigations revealed that, as at the time of filing this report on Tuesday November 5, 2025, it was still said that the police were still making effort to arrest the victims – with clear message to allegedly kill some marked active defenders of the land against the land grabbers. The people in police believed to be police operatives were said to have still visited with full forces of about 25 vehicles in yet another alleged invasion of the Eredo community.

According to the community leaders, the police operatives were doing these while deliberately flaunting and knowingly ignoring the order of court they were shown. The police should respect the court, stop taking sides with criminals because land grabbing is not a characteristic that is recognised in law except that the Constitution has empowered the police to fight them and save innocent lives of Nigerians, many of the victims said while crying for help against their alleged combined police/land grabbing invaders.

We are not collaborating with land grabbers – Abuja police source

However, allegations that police officers in Abuja were in anyway collaborating with land grabbers have been denied as, according to the only source we were able to reach, there is no power for an individual police officer to invite anybody without the authority and that. He said since he was not aware of anything that was happening in the community, his unit of the police force in Abuja only acted on a petition that required the person concerned to come and clear some of the issues.

He said the petition that he is working on is a land matter that is purely a civil case that also does not need anyone to be detained but that the alleged person only needed to come and attend to the petition against him before the police so that he too can know where the petitioner is coming from, present his own side to the story and leave.

The issues

But on Friday November 1, 2024, some of the Eredo community victims, led by their Baale, Chief Adewale Olaonipekun, converged for a crucial meeting following what they called threats of arrest coming from the police especially of Zone 2 and they met at the chambers of their legal counsel and solicitor, Yakubu Eleto Esq, after which an organised press conference was addressed by the lawyer, to update Nigerians on the development.

In his address, Yakubu Eleto said, “For sometimes now in since 2016 and more importantly from 2022 upward there has a lot of unrest in Eredo community in Epe Local Government Area of Lagos State where different types of people have been using Eredo has a trouble spot and have been using Eredo as a point of settling a lot scores, to extent that there has been incessant and continued harassment of the people of Eredo, to the extent that, at times prayers and religious places have been destructed both in the mosque, in the church, even people who are observing their traditional rites have had their stations disrupted by some persons, who are interested in crapping the property of the people of Eredo.

“To the extent that wife of the Imam in Eredo was arrested in purdah. She was detained in the station of DPO Noforija, during the time of the erstwhile DPO (names withheld), who detained the wife of the Imam in purdah for more than five days.

“And when we saw that these things were getting too much even to the extent that a four-year-old boy was killed by some persons in the community and the former DPO shielded them and prevented them from prosecution, and instead for the police then to investigate the perpetrators of the crime, they started pursuing the shadows.

“And when we see that activities of the police were getting too much in Eredo, arresting the people indiscriminately, disrupting their properties destroying their land, aiding and abetting crime in the community, we now felt the best thing we could do was to proceed to court and we filed our processes before the Federal High Court and we sought restraining order on the police and these people who are infringing on the rights of citizens and residents of Eredo; infringing on their rights particularly their rights to life, Section 33, their right to fair airing, Section 35, and their right to integrity of human person, Section 36 of the Constitution.

“We filed those cases and that matter was filed in March 2024 and it was duly served on the police. The court asked the police and all other respondents identified in the case to show course, nobody showed course. And instead of that, they still went on violating the rights of the people of Eredo.

The court injunction

“And the court now gave us an order of interim injunction and this is the order (displaying) dated the 13th day of October 2024 and let me read out the order: “it is ordered by this honourable court that the respondents should appear before this Honourable court at the next adjournment.”

“This is the content of the order: An interim order restraining the respondents, whether by themselves, their agents, servants, servants, privies, officers and howsoever called from further arresting, from detaining, further investigating, from further inviting, from further intimidating, from further threatening, from further inviting, from further intimidating, from further threatening, from further incarceration, from further harassing, charging or taking any untoward action against the applicants in connection with the facts of the case pending the determination of the suit”,” the order was quoted by Eleto.

He continued, “Now who are the defendants here? The defendants are: the Inspector-General of Police. The order is restraining the IG from taking any untoward action on the people of Eredo pending determination of this matter. The order is against the DIG FCID Abuja, the order is the AIG Zone 2, the order is against the CP Lagos and an inspector that they have been using to terrorise the people of Eredo. The order is against the CP FCID Abuja, CP Admin, whose office has always been used by this Inspector (names withheld), and this order is also against Kabiru Lamino popularly known as Akin Oluwo and Taiwo Enitiodunmo and the former DPO of Eredo, who has caused a lot of assaults in Eredo, among others.

“We have equally filed joinder to also join some new persons, who are also participating in these assaults against the people of Eredo,” the activist lawyer said, adding that the press conference was organised to alert the whole world and the police officers he said were being used to cause assaults on the Eredo community people that there is an existing order restraining them from doing so further,” he said.

He continued with further list of the people against whom the court order was issued, adding that Eredo had been peaceful before the influx of those people into the community.

“We are also using this opportunity to say that this order is also against OC Zonal Conflict Resolution Squad of Zone 2, and others.”

Barrister Yakubu Eleto then said, “Now, we are calling on the Inspector General of Police, who we know is not aware of these acts by some of these officers, we are bringing this order to his attention to use his capacity to restore peace and order in Eredo.

“We are calling on the Director of SSS to wade into this matter. We are calling on the Executive Governor of Lagos State to wade into this matter. We are calling on President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to equally wade into this matter. We are calling on the head of Nigerian Army, Chief of Army Staff to equally wade into this matter because a lot of times they used to bring soldiers to this, what are they doing there? They bring police and this matter is already in court. Let everybody wait for the decision of court. The peace in Eredo is now fragile and anything can happen at any time, and for there not.

He said for peace, law and order to reign was the reason they went to court and that, since the court had given an order to that regard, “I am appealing to members of the public, to the police and civilians involved to maintain peace until determination of court on the suit.”

The Baale submission

In his contribution to the press conference address, Baale Eredo, Chief Adewale Olaonipekun, corroborated the lawyer while he added by stating how the problem started by people of another community of Iragbusi, who, in a bid to exploit opportunity of hospitality of the Eredo people, started invading the community employing services of police officers, which gave them and few local collaborators, who have been disturbing the peace of Eredo since 2016, the impetus do so.

“We are the indigenes of Eredo and we had lived together in peace in Eredo since time immemorial. What baffled us was that this crisis and disturbance of peace started happening to the land in 2016 and the problem happened through Chief Jokoti. Because our fathers gave him land, he built house but long later in 2016 his children came with full force to grab more and more land,” he narrated

Investigations into the matter, which have taken a combined media team four months to carry out from July till date, revealed that Yakubu Eleto Chambers – lawyers to the victims had, in a petition dated 7th March 2024, addressed to the Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Command, Ikeja and was duly stamped ‘received’ on 13th March 2024 – lodged a formal complaint regarding the plight of the affected persons seeking for police authorities at higher levels to look into the alleged injustice and evils officially backed and done to the innocent citizens.

Speaking to a team of media practitioners in Lagos in July, Barrister Yakubu Eleto, principal partner of the Yakubu Eleto Chambers, said, “It is sad that we can have a DPO of any Nigerian Police Station, who would collaborate with criminal gangs for whatever reason and still help them perfect framed up charges and petitions to turn a good case seeking for justice against the victims,” he said adding that the DPO even boasted that he would do anything and nobody could stop him thus creating impression and fear that he might have been empowered by some powerful people within the system to rain terror on Nigerians without anyone to bring him to justice.

Photographs of the four-year-old boy killed by the land grabbers during the time of their invasion of the Eredo community and other victims were also provided by the complainants to our team of media investigators during the briefing at the weekend.

The update also showed, however, that their last invasion was seen by youths and elders in the community as overbearingly terrorising pushing them to say “Enough is Enough!” as they resisted combined land grabbers and police team with a message that either of the sides will die the next time such “unholy and illegal police and land grabbers” mission should happen in the peninsula Lagos community.

The persecuted and now fully resistant Eredo community Lagosians – whose crime is simply because they refused some strange, armed people (land grabbers) backed by police personnel coming to forcefully eject them from their ancestral land as they proclaim that their land is to them as important as it is to trees – are now calling on police authorities and Federal Government to rise to the challenge before they get out of hand as it is battle unwinnable even when backed by soldiers.

A victim’s side

Telling the story by himself, one of the victims and allegedly major target of the Police DPO/Land grabbers collaboration, Hon. Adeyemi Adebomehin, who spoke in Yoruba on tape from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the July media chat, gave a detailed account of the problem.

“My name is Adeyemi Adebomehin. I live in Epe. What happened was this, in Eredo community, some land grabbers invaded the place and killed a four years old boy then. Because I am related to the Eredo community, I was called and was told about the incident and I went there and followed up the case insisting that it should not happen that some people would just invade community like this like in situation of war. We arrested some of the land grabbers and took them to Noforija Police Station from where the case was transferred to Panti.

“It was while we were at Panti that the land grabbers made their own move to Abuja, that is the Nigeria Police Headquarters and from there they got those arrested and transferred to Panti released. Not only that, they now used that Abuja contact that they had to begin to attack the family of the victims. This was the reason we too now went to Abuja to explain to them what exactly happened and the Abuja released the family members they arrested based on what was later realized to be misleading petition by the land grabbers and then rearrested those land grabbers earlier released from Panti.

“At this point, after Abuja now rearrested those invading killer-land grabbers, the IPO of the case, surprisingly, was seen making frantic effort to turn the case upside down and bounce it all on the family of the victims. Upon all our efforts, the IPO wrote a report and sent it to DPP asking them to charge the same family of the victims even the Nigerian Police Force should be seen to protect against the evils of such criminal elements. Unfortunately for the IPO, DPP said from what he wrote and sent to them, “No case to answer” was what they could see.

“After it became clear to them that their plot to use the DPP to turn the case against the family of the victims had failed, they then organized and brought a dead body into the community and then made a statement to say that dead body was killed by family of the victims. That was IPO, officer of the Nigerian Police Force doing that to support land grabbers, who should be brought to justice for killing innocent Nigerians including a four-year-old boy.

“To really justify his allegation, the IPO, cooking the story, said the community did Oro rite and that it was during the Oro rite that the person was killed. From this point it became clear that the killer-land grabbers were working in collaboration with the DPO of Noforija Police Station.

“From that time, that was how the DPO started showing himself in this very sad case and he had found ways to attack me on several occasions. One day, accompanied by some of his policemen, he started to chase me and one of my brothers but did not succeed.

“After several attempts that the DPO, now fully involved in the evils, failed to achieve in implicating us, members of the family of the victims, he now wrote a petition to FCID claiming that we were the murderers of that person whose body his men brought to the community.

“After the FCID had come to attack us for about three times, we then asked them, “Why did you not send us invitation first and see whether we would not honour your invitation, that you just zoomed on our community and started attacking us? Then we now went to CRU with the IGP Monitoring Unit, from where the FCID was called but without response to the extent that they sent several signals to the DPO of Noforija Police Station, Epe, and the DPO too refused to respond. It got to a point that they came to arrest the DPO but he ran away.

“Surprisingly, after all the counter efforts that we now made with the CRU and IGP Monitoring Unit, the DPO now organized his boys to come and beg me so that the “fight” would be ended. But we told those people that he sent, “What should we do? We are not fighting with you but these people you are supporting cannot stop their criminal and violent invasion of people community.” We then accepted for peace move and he came and said, “I was misled. Truly, those land grabbers were the ones doing the criminal things but I did not know that they were the ones writing petitions and sending them all over the place.”

“We then told him, “When you knew they were the ones writing the petitions, why were you helping and supporting them to follow up those petitions? And when you arrested people for murder and Zone 2 ordered you to bring the case before them, why did you refuse and continue to keep them in your cell saying you had transferred them to Panti? So, you, yourself, have committed a lot of mistakes and we are aware for real that you were doing all those things because you had collected money from those suspected criminals.” That was what we did.

“When, again, we heard about imminent attack being planned by the land grabbers, we called and he gave us some policemen but those policemen he gave us arrested our own people, took them to their station and the DPO called us to say they had arrested the people to the station and that we should come over.

“Unknown to us, this same DPO had organized some policemen and touts, who started attacking us upon our arrival at his police station. This was how he pushed us into the cell and called the Area Commander that we came to burn the police station. As that argument persisted, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police became aware of the matter and the police people from the Noforija Police Station were invited to Lagos State Police Command and they confessed that it was DPO who plotted it.

“Having listened to this, the Commissioner of Police was aghast and he ordered immediate release of all of us the DPO had pushed into the cell on cooked up allegation of wanting to burn the police station. The CP said, “This is evil. It is a thing that makes policemen face policemen.”

“That was how the CP intervened and ordered our release without knowing that this same DPO already had another plan. I was just going on my own on a highway and some policemen just moved and attacked me, destroying my car but I escaped from there. It was later the police from that same Noforija Police Station called me to say they had invitation for me and I asked them, “Is that how invitation is served on a person?” The policeman that called said it was DPO that asked him to do so and he told me everything that the DPO had told him and which they had plotted to do to us.

“This is my story of experience in the hands of the DPO of Noforija Police Station, Epe, Lagos which my people and I want Nigerians and the world know about help us to look into in order to, by Allah’s support, save our lives and properties from the evil plots of the DPO and land grabbers of Lagos State that work together to deprive people of their land, murder the deprived and still use powers wrongly and with misinformation to victimize families of their victims in order not to get justice,” Hon Adebomehin narrated.

Lagos police sources

The media team, through one of the investigative media organizations, got in touch with the alleged DPO Noforija Police Station, Eredo, Epe on Wednesday and he was able to give his own side of the story.

Asked why his name resonates in the whole of the issues that happened in Eredo, he said, “I’m not there. I left there three months ago. I am now in Zone 2. Another DPO is there. I can’t give you details if you are talking about now because I’m no longer there.”

When confronted with the allegations that he was working with land grabbers against the people of the land, during his time as DPO Eredo, Epe, he started by asking, “How can a CSP, a DPO be working against the community? They should have mentioned specifically who they said I was working for. I have already left that place, I’m no longer with them. If they are saying I’m joining land grabber, is that my duty there? If they are fighting, if there is any criminality among them, if there is a fight among them, is there any way police would fold their arms without investigating their case?

“Because, me, I don’t go after land. It is when there is conflict or fight with them, that is when they normally come and report. Once we have the report, then we swung into action, we do not even join any one person because they are saying land matter. That is not our point. The criminality in the case, maybe there is a malicious damage or there is murder, most when they are attacking themselves or maybe they are going with dangerous weapons, that is when they normally call us. That is the only area where we intervene.

“There is one particular case that time that involved a murder, so we investigated and while we were investigating, I won’t even mention the name of the person, the person later brought himself out. While we were investigating that case, the person were looking for to come and interview the police, he ran away. He was running from pillar to pole to the extent that they even petitioned me to state House of Assembly. I went there to defend myself and defend the police. And I let them know that, that case is a case of murder, it is not a case of land grabbing. But the person conspire with some of the community members to conduct Oro festival, which the Baale (of Eredo) said they should not do and that led to the death of one teacher.

“If that is what they are referring to, they have the case file. Even the man himself, who was running from pillar to poll, went to Alagbon, went to Zone 2, went to IG Monitoring Unit in Abuja. I wrote and replied them. Even the person they killed, the pictorial evidence was splashed on that case file and even when they came to the station, the two disputants were still fighting against themselves. We arrested them and, with the help of the Area J Command in Elemoro, we were able to overpower them, arrested and took them to Area J Command. From there, the CP ordered that they should be charged to court because the case had already left the Division then.

“It’s not as if we were pursuing anybody for any matter that refers to land. It is the criminality aspect of it, like I said earlier, if there is a case of land that involve murder, assault or bearing dangerous weapons to attack an opponent, there is no way the police would fold their arms and watch. You know, one of the two disputants must be a complainant that would come to the station to complain against the other group. So we were not actually pursuing or doing anything in the interest of one person. We were doing it in the interest of peace for peace to reign in the community,” the former DPO said.

On whether he was aware of the four years old that was killed during one of the land grabbers attacks, the Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) answered in the affirmative.

“Four years old child? I was the DPO then when that incident of four years old child emerged. They came to the station, they ran from the bush. We didn’t go there to meeting them. They came to the station and reported that four years old child was attacked while the father was with him in the farm or in the site. Even soldiers went there. The soldiers got there before us but the soldiers said they cannot investigate a case of murder that it is the police that can investigate a case of murder. The soldiers now waited for us. In fact there was a very heavy down pour of rain that very day. The police now went there with soldiers and the youths of that place. We allowed the youths to enter the site first, it was a forest then, we went there with them, we saw the corpse f the four years old child. My boys recovered the four years old child. The corpse was taken to the mortuary for autopsy. Yes. It started like that.

“I’m not pursuing anybody on that case. All left for them. It is when cases become worse, that is when you see people will be going out and say they want to the fact. The fact had been known before, long ago. I’m not pursuing anybody and I don’t know if anybody is pursuing me because of the matter.”

On the allegation that even as he is currently in Zone 2, he is still insistent on fighting the Eredo people from there, the CSP said, “How can I be fighting them from Zone 2? Do I not have an AIG? I work under Assistant Commissioner of Police, Deputy Commissioner of Police and Assistant Inspector General of Police. Where would I take the case to? The case file, where would it go? I’m not fighting anybody here in Zone 2. Even the case, they have not even brought it to me. I would not even allow them to bring the case to me because I have no interest in that case because it had died at the Division there. That’s all I know.

“If they have any other subsequent cases they are doing with themselves, they can go and settle with themselves because I don’t have problem and I don’t have problem with anybody. I told you, when that man came, if he is there with you he can hear me, we reconciled. He had been my friend but later he said he’s no more my friend because of what happened. Did I ever raise my hand him. They said I was the one pursing them and I said no. I’m not pursuing you. I don’t have any interest in that case,” the former DPO said.

Although the Force Public Relations Office in Abuja and Lagos State Police Public  Relations Office, contacted then in July to provide our team of media investigators with information available to them about the matter, were yet to respond probably for official reason, a police source involving in the top level police investigations in Abuja, who could not deny or confirm the incidents only directed during the earlier part of the investigations in July saying that, “You will please have to go back to the department of the Nigeria Police Force, charged with the responsibility of giving out information on such cases.”

Our case is clear

Conclusively, the community leaders said their case is clear and it is that they (police) should fight on the side of the peaceful natives, prosecute land grabbers and stop threatening them with arrest and intimidation. Brandishing a court order, they said the police should respect court order and restore peace in Eredo community.