10 January 2012, Sweetcrude, LAGOS – The plan by the youths in Ifako Ijaiye Council of Lagos to invade the Pen Cinema Police Station in Agege to retaliate the alleged killing of Ademola Aderinto was averted by the swift intervention of the council chairman and a lawmaker from the area.
The council chairman, Mr Oloruntoba Oke, and the lawmaker, Mr Dayo Fafunmi, appealed to the youths for calm.
Addressing the youths, the lawmaker assured them that the Lagos State government had promised to ensure that the policeman responsible for the killing was duly punished, and urged the youths not to take the laws into their hands.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the youths had mobilised in their hundreds around Kayode Street, Ogba, for a reprisal attack on Pen Cinema Police Divisional Headquarters.
One of the leaders of the youth who spoke with NAN on grounds of anonymity, explained that their plan was “to invade the station and get our pound of flesh.
“Records show that the victims of extra judicial killings in Nigeria never get justice. We wanted to get justice for Ademola.”
Meanwhile, it will be recall that Segun Fabunmi, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of the station who allegedly shot Aderinto and his friends on Monday, had been arrested and detained on the orders of the Lagos State Police Commissioner, Yakubu Alkali.
Fabunmi, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), allegedly shot dead Aderinto and wounded three others, while the youths were playing football on the street at Ogba, Lagos, during Monday’s nationwide protest against petrol subsidy removal.
The Lagos State Police Commissioner had ordered that the DPO be detained at the special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Ikeja, pending investigations into the incident.
