The Lagos State Police Command has refuted claims that several individuals—men, women, and a young boy—were confined together in a single cell at the Maroko Police Station in the Lekki area of the state.
This comes after a viral video was shared on Monday by a Twitter user named Oyindamola, who goes by the handle #dammiedammie35 on X.com. In the video, a woman who identified herself as “real omo” recounted her experience of being crowded into a cell with other women and some men.
A voice in the video lamented, “(Men and) women are together in the cell. See small pikin [sic] with children. We don’t know what to do. You people should come to our aid, we are at the Maroko Police Station. We need help right now.”
The lady stated that they were “picked up” by security operatives while they were walking in an undisclosed area in Lekki.
“Yesterday night, they picked us, they arrested us. They said we could not walk because they were raiding. How am I supposed to know they were raiding in Lekki? I’m a victim, please, this is real omo. They said I’m going to prison, for walking in the night? This is too much for me to bear. Does this make sense?” she queried.
The video also showed the open roof of the confinement with some broken parts of the wall.
In response to the tweet, the command’s spokesperson, Benjamin Hundeyin, in a tweet on Monday, debunked the woman’s story saying the persons were kept in a “holding area where they are visible to officers on duty at the charge room.”
He emphasized that once individuals are placed in a cell, they would be separated, and none of them would have access to their phones.
Hundeyin wrote, “That is a holding area, where they are visible to officers on duty at the charge room (counter). Once they move into the cell proper, they are properly separated and they would not even have their phones with them.”
However, in an accompanying video shared by the police spokesperson, five males and five females were seen facing the wall.
The officer in the video said,” This is an open cell. These are children roaming around the streets, that ran away from their houses. The residents of Lekki brought them to the station, and most of them, their parents have come to take them over [sic]. They have only been kept in an open cell at the back of the charge room.”
The video showed the charge room, as the officer said the persons in question “decided” to stay along the passage leading to the male and female cells.