Four suspected members of the Aiye confraternity, a secret cult group in Lagos State, have been arrested for allegedly attacking the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in charge of the Igando Division, Lagos, Superintendent of Police Ogoezi Sufade Rawlings.
Eko Trust gathered that Rawlings had led his men to rescue some victims trapped in the premises of a hotel when the suspects attacked him and his right arm fractured.
The police said that on January 4,2018, at about 11.40p.m., a victim of the suspected cultists, whose names the police withheld, escaped from the cultists’ captivity in a hotel located near Afolabi bus-stop, lgando, along the Igando-LASU-lba expressway after the cultists’ leader known as SS had forcefully initiated him, and his phones and some money stolen from him.
The victim was then said to have alerted Rawlings of the activities of the cult group in the area, saying the suspects were actually in the process of conducting the initiation of new members within the hotel premises.
It was learnt that when the DPO and his men stormed the hotel at about 12:00a.m., they met stiff resistance as the hotel security guard, identified as Taiwo, denied the police team access into the hotel, thereby allowing some of the suspects to escape by scaling through the rear fence.
The police told our correspondent that one of the four suspects already in police custody had attempted to disarm Rawlings of his official service pistol while resisting arrest by hitting the police officer’s right arm with an iron rod, which allegedly led to the bone fracture he sustained.
Efforts by our correspondent to reach the proprietor of the hotel, Oba Samuel Adeoye, who is a traditional ruler in an Ondo State community, for comments proved abortive as he was said to be out of Lagos.
There was palpable fear of police clamp-down among the hotel’s workers as most of them declined to volunteer any information to our correspondent when he approached them for comment.
However, the hotel’s assistant manager and a supervisor there, identified as Abe and Segun respectively, confirmed that the police arrested the hotel’s manager known as Ade, a private security guard from the Agbara Estate Security Services known as Taiwo, and two cult suspects, Sandra and Emmanuel.
Segun denied that the hotel was being used for cult activities. According to him, it was while the police officers were beating Taiwo near the wall that the DPO hit his right arm on the wall.
At press time, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Mr Chike Oti, a Superintendent of Police (SP), promised to call back after he may have confirmed the incident.
