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How my wife and I were humiliated, manhandled by Nigeria Police at Moore Police Station Ile Ife By Dr Abiodun Olabanjo

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My wife and l are Medical Doctors practising in Ile Ife Osun state. While my wife works with OSHMB. I have a private hospital in Ile Ife. l had to drive my wife to her place of work this morning with the private hospital ambulance (Name of the hospital well written on the ambulance with Doctors stickers on the windscreen). We had passed through several police barricades on the way.

On getting to one of the barricades in front of Moore Police station, we stopped and they asked for our mission on the road, despite the lockdown declared by the Government, and we patiently introduced ourselves and told them where we work and the reason why I had to drive my wife to her place of work and also informed them that I would be coming back soon as I had a patient that was been prepared for surgery before I left the hospital.

To my surprise on my way back from State Hospital Oke Ogbo Ile Ife where my wife works unlike other checkpoints where we had passed, where they didn’t need to stop us again for questioning on seeing the same hospital ambulance, the police at the barricade in front of Moore decided to stop us again and we did.

They asked me again for my identity and I explained to them but they insisted on parking the ambulance despite all explanation. After some persuasion one of the police personnel ordered the barricade to be removed, a car in the front and we followed but as we drove on we heard a loud bang at the back of the ambulance with someone in boy scout uniform calling other policeman claiming we broke through their barricade.

We, therefore, decided to stop but before I could open the car door to come down they started hitting me from the car, slapping and dragging me out of the car saying we wanted to hit one of them.

I was kicked several times by these about 30/50 people who were not even aware of what transpired. On citing this my wife quickly came down to stop the one slapping and hitting me but they didn’t even allow her they started beaten and dragging her too to the police station.

We were then ordered to be locked up in the cell by the Area Commander without any interrogation.

Instead, they collected all our four phones our shoes and other personal belongings including the car key without allowing us to make any form of communication either to our people nor our lawyer.

It was one of our patients who witnessed the event that quickly reported the case at our hospital from where our lawyer was contacted.

It was our lawyer in company of the patient that was waiting for emergency caesarian section that came to bail us at the police station. As we speak now, we were told they threatened to charge us to court tomorrow for trial even without investigation calling us all sorts of names and concorted lot of lies against us.

Our questions are….. Are Doctors not permitted to go to their places of work during this lockdown? Is the hospital ambulance not permitted to move during lockdown?

Was it normal for the police officer to collect all our phones without allowing us to communicate either with our people or our lawyer……. Our phones were ringing several times and they were dancing and singing to the tunes despite telling them that someone was in distress. It is our desire to register our displeasure to the whole nation…….

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