By Christopher Oji, Lagos

The Oyemade Royal Family, which comprises three Lagos State families, Oyetubo, Banjoko and Okunade in the Okun Ibeju area of Lagos State have raised the alarm over the activities of policemen who allegedly lead land speculators to allocate their land to unsuspecting buyers.

The family in a petition to the Inspector General of Police accused the Police Special Fraud Unit (PSFU) of colluding with a certain powerful man to allocate its land in the Sangotedo area of Lekki Peninsula to an unsuspecting buyer.

In the letter dated October 8, the families claimed that the said man failed after the family succeeded in stopping him from using military men to terrorize them.

The man reportedly stopped using the military, when a letter was written to the Chief of Army Staff against an army colonel who was leading the military men.

The continued harassment by the police, according to the family is happening, even after the man who is using the police at PSFU, was arrested and released by operatives of the Inspector General of Police Monitoring Team after a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police intervened.

The latest accusation from the family followed an SOS to the IGP by the same families against the same man, who was accused of using suspected cultists and armed thugs to attack them and residents of their communities.

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They described the activities of the police on the land as a confirmation of the open and brazen boastfulness of the said Mbagwu, who reportedly claimed to be above the law.

In the petition against PSFU dated 8th October 2021 and addressed to the IGP, the families claimed that, although the police unit denied the allegation, when confronted by the authority in Abuja, its operatives, who were named in the petition, have continued to provide shelter and security during the allocation of land to unsuspecting buyers of the land.

In the letter written on behalf of the families by Barrister Olanrewaju Ayedun, the Oyemade Royal Family called on the IGP to use his ” good office to expeditiously restore the integrity of the police by directing that all the files in respect of this matter be forwarded to the office of the DIG under his direct supervision and a timeline of two weeks for investigations and prosecution be given ”

The families also stated that “the PSFU, having initially denied knowledge of the matter, led Mbagwu to allocate our client’ s land and remove our client’s signpost on the land to their office had shown manifest bias and thus its impartiality can no longer be reasonably guaranteed.

“This directive will save the force and deter citizens, who desire joy in misleading and manipulating pliable and compromised officers to bring infamy to the force,” the family also stated.

The families, who claimed never to have been invited by the police at PSFU, described the activities of officers of the unit as “antithetical, unfair, abuse of office and assault on the police institution.

They noted that “it is unlawful for the police to follow a party to a parcel of land to supervise the allocation of land to unsuspecting members of the public who have been unknowingly defrauded.”