That Police brutality against an employed lawyer on order of his boss-lawyer: A call for justice
By Bashir Adefaka
Olawore had to call the Lions Building Police Command’s DPO to send men who in turn came to brutalise a young lawyer he actually employed but who only had come to politely request for regularization of a cheque to be paid by bank and receipts of his tax payment as agreed in his letter of appointment. That temerity that the man I described in this piece as “employer-lawyer” had to so treat the young lawyer meant that he had pocketed the DPO of that Lions Building Police Command, like other senior lawyers do to other DPOs, just for the purpose of terrorizing people they consider as less opportune.
A video has gone viral in few days time now that looks like one of the junks on the social media but, this time, this video exposing brutalization of a young man who happened to be lawyer, Mr. Olakunle Karium Esq, employed by another lawyer, Mr. Oluyomi Olawore of Oluyomi Olawore & Co of 5th Floor, Itoku House, No. 28/30, MacCarthy Street, Onikan, Lagos, is not a junk. It is real.
Looking keenly into the video behold a familiar face and then can confirm that the guy being hit left, right, front and back and dragged, to be that of a young lawyer that I know very well. A further probe of the incident revealed that Olakunle Karimu was being persecuted for coming to ask his boss, Oluyomi Olawore, to regularize a cheque he gave to him as his final payment having terminated his appointment for reason best known to him but which he brought back to him for regularization on the instruction of the bank. He said he was also back in the office to request for his receipts of tax payments based on agreement reached with him by Olawore at the point of his employment in June 2017.
But with nonchalant, the boss, Oluyomi Olawore, according to Karimu, bluntly dismissed him saying he would neither regularize the cheque nor hand to him receipts of his tax payments and the next thing he did was to call the Lions Building Police Command from where two hefty men came and started brutalizing him.
“Despite pleading with him to sign the cheque, he threatened me that Police officers were on their way to get me out. I was shocked and afraid when the Police arrived and without identifying themselves began to assault and threaten me with a gun alleging that I was threatening to kill and holding Mr. Olawore hostage.
“I was unharmed, neither was any formal complaints made against me, but I was brutalized and left writhing in pain. Thereafter, Mr. Olawore ordered the officers to leave me alone,” the victim gave details of what happened and how it happened in the petition filed to the Governor Akinwumu Ambode of Lagos State, copies of which have been sent to other appropriate quarters in the country.
That said and done, the point I will like to raise here is that, such a huge evil that a senior lawyer in Oluyomi Olawore could do to another qualified lawyer in his employment was committed not to just a lawyer but nephew of Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju (Rtd), former Minister of Communications of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and former General Officer Commanding (GOC) Third Armoured Division of the Nigerian Army. That lawyer that Mr. Olawore used the Lions Building Police to so brutalise is also nephew of former Lagos State Commissioner for Agriculture, Cooperative and Rural Development, under the Lagos State Military Administration of Brigadier General Muhammad Buba Marwa, and above all, the biological father of this brutalized lawyer is no other person but Engr. Lateef Olanrewaju Karimu, a public servant who served meritoriously for almost 28 years in Lagos State Water Corporation and retired as Director, Productions in January, 2015 and also his Aunt is currently an Assistant Director in the Lagos State Ministry of Justice.
Now, the combination of these family heavyweights behind this young, promising but brutalized lawyer is threatening to go to court on condition that those that should do justice over this matter do not discharge their duties.
And my observation however is that, lawyers like Oluyomi Olawore abound in their multitudes in the Nigerian public and private lives who have inflicted and still continue to inflict pains and injustice on innocent citizens especially those who either do not know their rights or who even know their rights but do not have the capacities to withstand their persecution.
Olawore had to call the Lions Building Police Command’s DPO to send men who in turn came to brutalise a young lawyer he actually employed but who only had come to politely request for regularization of a cheque to be paid by bank and receipts of his tax payment as agreed in his letter of appointment. That temerity that the man I described in this piece as “employer-lawyer” had to so treat the young lawyer meant that he had pocketed the DPO of that Lions Building Police Command, like other senior lawyers do to other DPOs, just for the purpose of terrorizing people they consider as less opportune.
But I find my consolation in the fact that the current administration of the Nigerian Police Force under the Inspector-General of Police Alhaji Ibrahim Kpotun Idris and by extension chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC), IGP Musiliu Smith (Rtd), the DPO and the two hefty men he used in carrying out this brutalization against this young Lawyer Olakunle Karimu Esq will be used as a testing ground and deterrent to other officers and men whose stock in trade is to use the powers of gun to terrorise the same innocent, law abiding citizens they are supposed to be providing security and safety.
*Bashir Adefaka is a Lagos-based media practitioner.
