LAGOS MAY 23RD (URHOBOTODAY)-There was pandemoniumon Sunday night at Igando, suburb when a female police corporal was alleged to have beaten a bus driver, Muyiwa Ijawduola to death with police baton.
The policewoman, whose identity is still unknown, attached to the Igando Police Division, was said to have attempted to compel the driver to drop the usual gratification for the police, but he refused.
Taking laws into her hands, she allegedly dragged him down from the bus and used her baton to beat him to a pulp, in the full glare of her colleagues.
While she was beating him, the driver who tried to protect his head with his hands, slipped and fell into the gutter, hitting same head on the ground.
The police have since removed his body, even as the family members have been invited to the station for a meeting with the Divisional Police Officer.
According to an eyewitness account, the policewoman had stopped the deceased in front of NNPC bus stop, demanding that she be given N500 as part of her settlement.
The source that spoke on anonymity said, “The driver had explained that he was just resuming work for the day, thus he didn’t have enough money on him but the policewoman refused his appeal for mercy.
“She began to hit him with her baton. She even forced him down from the bus. It was in the process that he slipped and died. Immediately she noticed that he had stopped moving, she and her colleagues ran away.”
Following the death of the driver, some of his colleagues, their conductors and sympathizers took to the street to protest the gruesome death, inadvertently causing a terrible traffic snarl that ground the area for hours.
Attempts by the police to quell the pandemonium that arose met stiff resistance from the rampaging mob, as they repelled the police, forcing them to go back to their station.
Our correspondent learnt that it took the combined efforts of soldiers of the Nigerian Army to restore peace in the area and ease the traffic snarl.
The Acting Lagos State police spokesman, Chukwuma Ozoani affirmed that the victim slumped and died , arguing that he was not beaten by the police.
According to him, “The victim was not beaten by police women. How could police traffic officers who are not armed beat a man to death? The man slumped at the Bus stop and died. Some people said he has epilepsy. Policewomen has no hand in the death, even eyewitnesses at the place confirmed that. The police was trying to take him to the hospital when it was discovered that he has no life in him anymore. Hoodlums in the area went wild alleging that police did not act fast to save him. “