S.O.S: Epe, Lagos families cry out over alleged collaborative activities of Police DPO, land grabbers {FULL STORY}
S.O.S: Epe, Lagos families cry out over alleged collaborative activities of Police DPO, land grabbers {FULL STORY}
*DPO now transfered to Zone 2, FCID officer ignoring court order stopping arrest of victims of land grabbers allegedly backed by them
(An investigated report)
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 carriers, allegedly working in collaboration with DPO of Noforija Police Station, Eredo, Epe in the Centre of Excellence.
The investigations, 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.
The petition’s subject matter was summarized in the headings as: “A desperate cry for help and clamour for the effective resolution to the unrest, torture, threat to life and personal property as regards the owners, settlers on the land of the Eredo Community, Particularly a call for the arrest of the IPO Chike, Sir Kay Oluwo, some thugs led by T9 Enitiodunmo and other unknown persons in the company of armed uniformed men who shot sporadically at Hon. Adebomehin Adeyemi and carted away his vehicles and other valuables.
“Protest petition against DPO Noforija (using police uniform for land grabbing), local vigilante in Eredo Epe (Emiloju, Marry Muwon), Sir Kay Oluwo, T9 Enitiodunmo, Inspector Chike, Bunmi and some unknown police men for their incessant malicious persecution, arrest, incarceration, suppression, and framing of charges against Hon. Adebomehin Adeyemi, Matthew Murtala, Adewale Olaonipekun Adul Wakeel Adegbenro, Akee Iyabo, Damilare Odumosu, Bola Ayeni, Kudirat Arowolo, Oyebadejo Oretuga and others: A plea to the Officer of the Inspector General of Police to look into and curb the injustice and irregularities associated with the move by the CP Homicide Section of the Force Criminal Investigation Department Area 10 Abuja using ACP Kontagora M. Bashir to subvert justice, and need to allow unbias teams of police officers to investigate the matters relating to the death, killings, torture, unrest happening in the Eredo Community, Epe, Lagos State.”
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.
Latest developments on the matter showed that, while no level of authorities within the police hierarchy from Lagos to Abuja has been seen to be effective enough to tackle the excesses of these elements who come in full force for a kill from Abuja, 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 and seize it to silence them.
Worst is that, despite that 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 collaborative persecution and court order presented to them, calls continued to fly from both Abuja (Sulaiman meina FCID) to one of the targeted victim whose car he has since taken away after allegedly attacking the owner and another call from DPO Ikpehia now in Zone 2 Lagos Command of the Nigerian Police Force incessantly threatening 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 further revealed that, as at the time of filing this joint report on Tuesday November 5, 2025, reports still reached the media investigative team that these police invaders – with clear message to kill some marked active defenders of the land against their collaborative land grabbers – still visited with full forces of about 25 vehicles.
The police operatives were doing these while deliberately flaunting and knowingly ignoring the order of they were shown. “The police respect the court, stop taking sides with criminals because land grabbing is not a characteristic recognised in law except that the Constitution has empowered the police to fight them and save innocent lives of Nigerians.
On Friday November 1, 2024, some of the victims led by Baale Eredo in Epe Local Government Area of Lagos State, Chief Adewale Olaonipekun, to a crucial meeting at the chambers of the lir legal counsel and solicitor, Yakubu Eleto Esq, after which a press briefing was done to update the media over the development.
Eleto said, “For sometime 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 desrupted by some persons, who are interested in crapping the property of the people of Eredo.
“To the extent that wife of the Imam in Ero was arrested in purdah. She was detained in the station of DPO Noforija, during the time of the erstwhile DPO CSP Gregory Ikpekhia, who detained the wife of the Imam in purdah for more than five days.
“And when we saw that these things were getting to 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 albetting crime in the community, we now felt the best thing we could do was to procede the Federal High Court and we filed our processes before the 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 ofvthe 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 poluce and all other respondents identified in the to show course, n9bidy show course. And instead of that, they still went on violating the rights of the people of Eredo.
“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: And interim order restraining tge 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 Inspector Chika.
“Inspector Chika is the one 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 Chika, and this order is also against Kabiru Lamino popularly known as Akin Oluwo and Taiwo Enitiodunmo andvthe former DPO of Eredo, who has caused a lot of assaults in Eredo and in the person of CSP Gregory Ikpekhia, 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 tge Eredo community people that there is an existing order restraining them from doing so further.
He continued, “This order is also against Mr. China Adebowale, Mr. Muyi Odumosun, Mr. Felixstowe Odukoya, Inspector Sulaiman Maina, this Inspector Sulaiman Maina also killed some of the residents of Eredo. Why is it only Eredo in Epe? I dontbknow. And Eredo had been peaceful before the influx of these people.
“We are also using this opportunity to say tgat this order is also against OC Zonal Conflict Resolution Squad of Zone 2, it’s also against DCP Martins 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 restire 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 Aofrmy Staff to equally wade into this matter because a lot of times they used to bring Army’s soldiers to this, what are they doing there. They bring police and this matter is already in court. Let everybody wait for tge decisiin 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.”
In his contribytion to tge press conference address, Baale Eredo, Chief Adewale Olaonipekun, accused a Lagos traditional ruler that and others present agreed have those who disturbing the peace of Eredo 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 peace started happening to the land 2016 and problem happened through Chief Jokoti. Because our fatgers gave him land, he built house,” he narrated
He added that due to issues between his family in lIragbusi and because he had a house in Eredo, the Iragbusi family started bringing in land grabbers “and we told them, you came Iragbusi which is different from this place. This is Eredo. Even if you want to drag case with us, haven’t family house that you point to as your family house that you can day is reason to fight us. The matter dragged to the point they were beating police. All of thosevtimes, Baba Jokoti, as money back, was the one using some family and whenever he wanted to sell land he would being in SAS. Later he brought thugs, and land grabbers who would come in with guns, weapons of all kinds but, because we could not follow them in that, we went to court and court has stopped each side from using police to harass the other,” he said.
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 persinnel coming to forcefully eject them out of their 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 issues before they get out of hand as it is battle unwinnable even when backed by soldiers.
Telling the story by himself, one of the victims and major target of the Police DPO/Land grabbers collaboration, Hon. Adeyemi Adebomehin, who spoke on tape in Yoruba, 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.
The media team through one of the media organization got in touch with police authorities in Abuja and Lagos State Police Command since the DPO Noforija Police Station, Eredo, Epe had not been readily available for his own side of the story.
Although the Force Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) and Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Ben Hundeyin, contacted to provide our team of media investigators with information available to them about the matter, were yet to respond, a police source involving in the top level police investigations in Abuja, who could not deny or confirm the incidents only directed that, “You will please have to go back to the Public Relations Department of the Nigeria Police Force, charged with the responsibility of giving out information on such cases.”
In the meantime, another allegedly targeted lead victim, who insisted on anonymity, has provided identities of the lead actors in the police invasion as:
“The DPO Noforija by name Gregory Ikpekhia. He has now been transferred to Zone 2 Command of the Nigeria Police Force Lagos but he is still insisting on attacking Eredo community in Epe until he will have killed the active members of the community including Honourable Adeyemi, who are saying to forcrgil taking of their land by land grabbers.
“The police personnel in mufti is identified as Sulaiman Maina, who led the invading police team from FCID. Federal Bureau of Investigation Abuja.
“The questions we are now asking are: What is the connection, which the police officers and personnel that are constitutionally responsible for protecting innocent and law abiding citizens with their trainings and weapons, have with land grabbers that this DPO and the FCID man in Abuja are so much involved the way they are? Two, what could have been the reason for the boasting boldness of DPO Gregory Ikpekhia, now transferred to Zone 2 that he would threaten to kill his victims and that nobody can do anything about it and the same officer is still very active in the Nigerian Police? What interest does Lagos government have in land grabbers that they cannot even rise to the challenge and save the lives of defenceless Nigerians they claim to govern by providing security and welfare for, under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Who should we now run to for help if neither the government nor the police of the Federal Republic is able to provide us security, protection and safety?”
