IGP, orders arrest of Lawyer for writing letter for client

A team of Police officers from the office of Inspector General of Police, IGP monitoring section arrested a Lagos Lawyer, Barrister Olufemi Ajiboso and detained him for two days for writing a letter on behalf of his client over a business transaction.

It was gathered that the armed police team who came from the Police Headquarters in Abuja to Lagos led by one Udofia Akpan and other officers were said to have come to recover debt owed by Ajiboso’s client. They stormed Ajiboso’s chambers at Agege area of Lagos and bundled him away in a Rambo-style to an undisclosed location, claiming that it was an order from the IGP.


According to the residents, Ajiboso was taken away on a hired white Toyota Hiace bus with an undisclosed number and moved around before he was later dumped at the SARS cell at the State Command, Ikeja for days without bail.

The victim narrated how he was tortured, battered, subjected to all manner of inhuman treatments and was not allowed him to see any member of his family for two days until they forced him to sign an undertaking.

An embittered Ajiboso said that their leader, one Udofia told him that it was the IGP that sent them to arrest and bring him down to the Police Headquarters in Abuja for writing a letter on behalf of one of his clients based abroad to a company based in Lagos on a business transaction.

Ajiboso said he was still wondering how the IGP sent the team to come and arrest him for that purpose and had thought they were hired assassins until they showed him the letter he purportedly wrote to a company over debt owed by his client. He narrated further that before his arrest, his client introduced one Captain Edward Williams who lived abroad to him that they had issues with a transaction to the tune of $112,000 USD with Excellent Gold Investment Nigeria Limited at 22 Broad Street, Lagos Island.

Ajiboso said he wrote the letter on behalf of his client explaining inability to defray the money because his client’s account was temporary blocked by his bank. In the letter sighted by Ajiboso wrote on behalf of Williams noting that the company transferred $112,000 USD which the equivalent was supposed to be about N40m.

The letter stated that Williams could not transfer the equivalent of the money to the company due to the problem he encountered with his bank. He informed the company to give his client some time to sort things out with his bank and the money will later be transferred.

Ajiboso said that it was writing the letter that the police claimed was a criminal offence and came all the way from Abuja to arrest him.

He said that when he was arrested, the police said the letter was an undertaking and he must produce those who introduced him to Williams otherwise they will whisk him away and waste him. Ajiboso said he had never seen that kind of maltreatment as he was stripped and exposed to health hazards throughout the period he was in captivity.


On what he intended to do next, he said he had already dispatched a petition to the National Assembly and will soon file for fundamental rights enforcement at the Federal High Court over the torture.
Press tried to contact the FPPRO to know if it was the IGP that sent those officers, but all attempts failed as his phones were switched off.