Two car dealers have petitioned the Assistant Inspector General of Police in charge of Zone 10, over alleged extortion by one, Lawali Nabodo, a police officer attached to the IGP’s Monitoring Unit, Abuja.
The car dealers, Sa’idu Muhammad of S. M. Motors, Sokoto and Faruq Aliyu Gwandu of Shallar Dauda Area Gwandu, Kebbi State told Caliphate Trust that the officer led some people to their respective places of business and arrested them on allegation of being in possession of stolen vehicles.
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In the process of arresting Sa’idu Muhammad, Lawalli Nabodo was alleged to have forcefully collected the sum of N440,000 from him.
“I was eating when they came to arrest me and I was in the possession of N440,000 at the time, which I attempted to hand over to my neighbour to keep for me, but they pounced on him and seized the money,” he alleged.
Caliphate Trust learnt that even the said neighbour was not spared as he was taken into custody for two days.
Muhammad added that two cars were taken away from his company by the officers, including the one brought for safe keeping.
On his part, Faruq Aliyu alleged that after his arrest, his mobile phone was seized and thoroughly searched and when they saw a credit alert of N 355,000, Nabodo asked for his ATM card, which was not with him at the time.
He then directed him to call his relations and ask them to bring the card, which he did without hesitation.
It was alleged that, when the ATM card was brought by his son, Nabodo handcuffed Aliyu and took him to the nearest P.O.S centre and allegedly forced him to withdraw all the money at gunpoint.
He was later taken back to the cell at Gwiwa Police station where he and Muhammad were detained for three days before taken to Kaduna.
However, Nabodo, was alleged to have contacted their respective relations, bargaining for what they could pay to secure their release.
It was alleged that the officer had initially asked them to pay the sum of N1million before it was later reduced to N130,000 for Muhammad and N200,000 for Aliyu, this was beside the money they forcefully collected from them while in Sokoto.
It was said that Nabodo had supplied the families with a similar bank account, domiciled with First Bank, bearing the name of Ikira Muhammad through which the monies were paid before the dealers were eventually released.
“But our vehicles are still with them, despite showing them their original papers, including Custom duties.
“We found out that the cars were personally used by those who arrested us after removing original plate-number, indicating that nobody is complaining against us,” they further alleged.
They, therefore, urged the AIG to invite Lawali Nabodo and ensure justice was done to them.
When contacted on phone, Nabodo denied all the allegation, insisting that the money collected from them were parts of their recovery operation.
According to him, they arrested one professional car snatcher who indicted the dealers and after their arrest, some of the vehicles were recovered and the money collected was for those that were unaccounted for.
“They have all confessed to their crimes and nobody forced them to give money and we did not collect anything for their bail.
“The money they gave was the proceeds of the uncovered vehicles because the buyers could not be traced,” he said.
On their claim that all the vehicles have original papers, Nabodo said that their investigation proved that all the papers were fake and they have even arrested the person that was making the papers.
He added that the cases were already in court.
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