Joy Anyim
Hoodlums disguising as #EndASRS protesters, on Tuesday, took laws into their hands, setting the Orile Police Station in Lagos ablaze, killing a a policeman.
It was learnt that the hoodlums numbering about 100, attempted to invade the police station around 9a.m., but were repelled by policemen on duty.
The policemen reportedly locked up the entrance gate to the police station, but the hoodlums, who had regrouped, started hurling stones, bottles and sticks into the station.
In line with the directive of the Commissioner of Police (CP), Lagos State Police Command, Hakeem Odumosu, urging policemen in the state not to react to attacks, the policemen at the station, overlooked the hoodlums.
The attack took a different dimension after the hoodlums poured fuel round the modern police station built by the Babatunde Raji Fashola’s administration in 2012, and set it on fire.
A policemen who jumped the fence in order to escape being caught in the inferno, was said to have landed in the hands of the hoodlums who stabbed him to death.
A resident of the area who identified himself as Mr. Niyi said the attack may be the handiwork of a terror group known as “Adeleye boys”.
He said the group had engaged in a subtle protest of alleged high handedness by the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Daniel Folashade, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), and her boys.
The DPO reportedly fled the station abandoning her subordinates at the heat of the attack.
Our correspondent gathered that the policemen trapped in the building shot several severally from inside the building to disperse the protesters in order to escape but to no avail.
Contacted for comment, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Olumuyiwa Adejobi, said he was yet to get details of the attack.
He promised to get back to the correspondent but was yet to do so as at the time of this report.