Motorcyclists arrested for death of policeman during raid

A police corporal, Emmanuel Emefiele, has been stabbed to death during a raid on motorcycle riders on the 4th Avenue, FESTAC Town, Lagos State.

PUNCH Metro learnt that the 36-year-old was among a team of policemen from the FESTAC Police Division, who raided the community around 1am on Friday to enforce the state law which forbids riding of motorcycles at ungodly hours.

A mob, consisting of the okada (motorcycle) riders and some hoodlums, was said to have resisted the policemen and in the ensuing scuffle, attacked Emefiele with a knife.

A police source told our correspondent that other policemen fled the scene, as the motorcyclists dispossessed them of their rifles.

Our correspondent learnt that the cops later reinforced and returned to the scene.

“They chased the motorcyclists and recovered the arms from their hideouts. Two of the suspects, who took the guns, were arrested. But they said they were not the ones that stabbed him. One of them said he took the gun so he could return it to the Divisional Police Officer,” he said.

The two suspects, Tari Gau and Vadiya Jonah, however denied complicity in the crime.

The men, who gave a different version of the story, said they were about leaving a suya joint when the policemen, who were in a commercial bus, accosted them and attempted to seize their motocycles.

Gau, a 26-year-old indigene of Adamawa State, who reportedly came to Lagos in 2009 due to the insurgency in the north east, alleged that one of the cops stabbed him in the hand with a knife.

He said, “My friend, Jonah, and I went to a suya joint around 8pm on Thursday. We were about leaving when the police team blocked us.

“Two of the policemen came down and asked us to disembark from the motorcycles. But because I knew many of them, I started begging for mercy. I was kneeling when one of them brought out a knife and burst the front and the back tyres of my friend’s motorcycle.

“As he was about to burst the front tyre of my motorcycle, I knelt and asked him to spare me. But he stabbed me in the hand.

“I began to cry in my language, ‘Ya sukeni, Ya sukeni.’ ”

Gau said the policemen, who did not understand that he was merely begging them, took to their heels and abandoned their rifles and the knife.

He said he and his friends picked the guns and the knife and began to push their deflated motorcycles homeward.

The suspect said he abandoned the motorcycle when he saw that the police had returned with reinforcement and arrested Jonah.

He said he succeeded in taking the rifle home, adding that when the policemen came, he insisted that his friend must be released first.

“They said they would pay me N10,000 if I could release the gun. Later, they took me to the police station where I saw my friend. They took me to my house and I gave the gun to them. They then arrested me.

“It was in the cell that they told me a policeman had died. I don’t know about his death,” he added.

He said the deceased cop had a scuffle with his friend, Jonah, adding that he (Gau)never came near him.

However, Jonah, denied stabbing the late cop, saying it was Gau who struggled for the knife with him.

“Gau took the gun and knife home after the incident, while the police came back and arrested me,” the 25-year-old said.

PUNCH Metro was told that the policeman’s corpse had been deposited in a mortuary, while the suspects had been transferred to the State Department of Criminal Investigation, Yaba.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Lagos State Command, Patricia Amadin, when contacted, confirmed the incident.

She said, “Case is confirmed.”