Policemen attached to the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and other Special Offences, on Wednesday, went barbaric beating up BusinessDay driver, Edwin Elibe, and made away with the company’s car.
This was the second time in one year that policemen working with the taskforce headed by Bayo Sulaiman, a chief superintendent of police (CSP), would be brutalising staff of BusinessDay.
Sometimes in May last year, the taskforce men pounded Francis Abiagam, a photo-journalist with BusinessDay who was on legitimate duty by taking shots of the demolished illegal structures under the Marine Bridge in Apapa.
Aside beating Francis mercilessly, the taskforce men forced him to roll in the murky waters under the bridge and threatened to shoot him for daring to take shots of demolition exercise carried out publicly and widely applauded as a welcome development.
BusinessDay protested this inhuman treatment but nothing was done by the state government.
The latest assault, Wednesday, on Edwin Elibe, a driver with the media house by the policemen seemed a deliberate action by the Lagos State taskforce which has made BusinessDay its target of attack.
Elibe was accosted at Doyin Orile-Iganmu axis of Lagos-Badagry expressway by the policemen who accused him of breaking their convoy. Upon stopping the driver, three of the policemen suspected to be drunk, dragged him out of his car, tear-gassed him, before jointly pounding the poor driver who by this time had gone blind following the effect of the tear-gas used on him.
The driver’s plea that he did not notice the convoy as there was no siren was ignored. After satisfying themselves that they have done a thorough beating of Elibe, the policemen drove the BusinessDay car away.
One of the policemen, who was said to have pitied Elibe following the condition his three colleagues left him, however, offered to take the poor driver to an unknown hospital, an offer the driver turned down since he did know the policeman’s true mind.
Meanwhile, Elibe who was subsequently taken to a private hospital in Festac Town by BusinessDay has been treated and discharged, while the police are still in custody of the company’s car.
