Resurgence Of ‘SARS’ Activities: Rivers Police Arrest SCIID Personnel, Recover Extorted Money

Less than seventy two hours after Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara lamented resurgence of criminal activities of ‘SARS’ Officials, two Police Officers said to be serving at  State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Port Harcourt have been arrested by the Rivers State Police command over extortion and the money extorted.

Recall that Governor Fubara had lamented the harassment and extortionist activities of ‘SARS’ officials when the Commissioner of Police, CP Emeka Nwonyi paid him a courtesy visit in Governor House last Friday. Governor Fubara had tasked CP Nwonyi to investigate complaints that ‘SARS’ personnel were extorting and harassing Youth in the state.

We learned that the said SCIID personnel involved in the alleged extortion were arrested following a complaint by one of the victims at twitter tagging the Force Spokesperson, Prince Adejobi Olumuyiwa.

The Force spokesperson had upon receipt of the victim’s complaint tweeted

” So, PPRO Rivers, come up and take up this case while we do the needful from Abuja. By now, we are not expected to still be seeing or hearing Policemen searching people’s phone on road after several warnings from the IGP”.

The Police Public Relations Officer in Rivers State, SP Grace Iringe Koko who confirmed the arrest and detention of one of the Police Officers did not state if the money had been recovered and the total amount involved, neither did she disclose the unit were the officers were serving.

SP Koko tweeted: “Good evening Sir, the officer in this post has been arrested and detained, investigation is ongoing, I urge the complainant to come and facilitate the investigation process for us to give feedback to members of the public.

“Sir@Life of Napaul, you said you are no longer interested in this matter of alleged extortion you reported through this medium while the Commissioner of Police Rivers State command is fully interested and insist that you should avail us with your email address” SP Koko added.

Meanwhile sources told our reporter that the complaint simply identified as Napaul was threatened to drop the case.

However in response to tweet message sent by our reporter to his inbox, Napaul denied been threatened .

He said ” what are you hearing,I wasn’t threatened, I am done with anything concerning the case and I want to live my life”.

Earlier, Napaul narrated how he was extorted

“Today on my way to PH via a public transport, in the middle of nowhere, we were told to park, I was searched, my whatsapp chats were opened one by one, every app was searched and they found nothing.

“In the middle of nowhere, these guys said they won’t free us until we service them, we are just 4 guys in the sienna, the rest women. They said 50k each I just kept laughing because it sounded like a joke .

“They told the driver to leave us and go but I kept begging the driver to stay that he can’t leave us, I didn’t know our location at the moment. We stood for over Ihr30mins,I tried talking back and they handcuffed me. Bro I’m not a criminal, they said I’m a suspect, I kept asking how?.At that moment, I was so angry.

“At the end we paid 10k, each for being Nigerian Youths. The funny thing is that these so called officers were counting the money they made from extortion in front of us. Convince me how this guys ain’t criminals in uniform, convince me?

“Someone will say how did you dress? I don’t dress anyhow, I ‘m always neat and simple. I’m bald, meaning I’m not on dreads or any hairstyle that warrants suspicion. So it isn’t an appearance thing.

“I’m home but the question in my head is, why? why? it’s annoying for God’s sake.

“I took a pic of the man that searched my phone before he collected my phone

“The account number I sent the money to was a woman’s account number and I searched Facebook and discovered she’s lives at Abuja. I didn’t get their names, the Hilux they used wasn’t the official, he said”.

We gathered that the incident occurred at Igwurita/Etche road.

SP Koko was yet to respond to text messages on development on the reported incident