A property owner, Olufemi Fasehun, and other residents have urged the Inspector General of Police (IGP) not to reinstate a case involving their homes to the Zone 2 Police Command.
Some officers from the command allegedly acted as enforcers for land grabbers, sealing 15 homes and a N50 million restaurant for 55 days without a lawful court order.
It was only through the intervention of the IGP Monitoring Unit that the properties were unsealed.
Officers from the Zonal Monitoring Unit (ZMU), Zone 2 Command, Onikan, Lagos, stormed the property at 10, Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, Ikeja, on June 4, padlocking residential doors, chaining gates, and forcing businesses to shut down in what residents describe as “a siege in broad daylight.”
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The compound, home to 15 families and the popular Paradox Restaurant, remained sealed until July 28, when the IGP intervened directly.
Despite the intervention, the landlord and residents are now alleging a plot to send the case back to Zone 2 Command.
“This is a litmus test for the integrity of the Nigeria Police Force,” said Fasehun’s lawyer, Femi Isikalu.
The residents, in a joint petition to police authorities, called for the immediate suspension of the implicated officers; full disciplinary action under the Police Act, 2020; a permanent bar on returning the case to Zone 2 Command and criminal prosecution of all involved land grabbers.
The property is at the centre of a civil dispute in Suit No. ID/11239LMW/2021 before Justice Y.A. Oshoala of the Lagos High Court with a subsisting order for all parties to “maintain the status quo.”
Despite this, alleged land grabbers bypassed legal procedures and enlisted the help of ZMU officers to seize the property by force.
Even after Fasehun, an engineer, presented an affidavit proving compliance with the court order, the police team allegedly dismissed it as “irrelevant.”
Goldrush Partners, solicitors to Fasehun, described the police action as “illegal enforcement of a mischaracterised court order” and a direct assault on judicial authority.
After repeated petitions to the Assistant Inspector General (AIG), Zone 2, went unanswered, the IGP ordered the Monitoring Unit in Abuja to take over the case.
CSP Mohammed Abdulkarim was dispatched to Lagos to reopen the property, and investigations were transferred away from what the complainants described as “compromised” ZMU officers.
“If the IGP hadn’t stepped in, we would have had a full-scale humanitarian crisis,” Fasehun told reporters..
“What happened here was nothing short of institutional gangsterism.”