A middle-aged Uber driver, Luke Gum, has demanded justice following alleged brutalisation by officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over a traffic matter in the Ikoyi area of Lagos State.
City Round gathered that Gum, a taxi driver plying the Ikoyi axis, on Monday, had his car dented from behind by the driver of a car suspected to belong to a senior official of the anti-graft agency.
Speaking with our correspondent, Gum said he stepped out of the car only to be met with the driver of the car, who began to insult him despite seeing that his (Gum) car received a chunk of the damage.
He said, “I was even the one who wanted to take the matter to the police station before she (the official) and her driver stopped me from going. After the woman made a call, 10 EFCC officials came with a bus and forced me to enter. One of the officials punched my neck, while another kept hitting me with the butt of his gun from Awolowo Road to their office.
“When we finally reached their office, they told me to sit on the floor. I didn’t comply immediately since I did not commit any crime. When they saw that I refused to sit on the floor, one of them hit my leg with his boot, and I fell. And then, the madam was telling her other colleagues that I was trying to fight her and that her driver beat me up, and she said that was why she had to call the office.”
Gum said he was detained for over three hours, adding that the officials drove him to the police station at Onikan, where he was not allowed to make any statement and was only told to get brake oil to clean the part where the car of the EFCC official was slightly brushed.
On Tuesday, the spokesperson for the EFCC, Mr Dele Oyewale, stated that the scuffle was between Gum and the EFCC official’s driver, dismissing the claim that he was beaten up by the anti-graft agency officials.
Oyewale said, “Along the line, he brushed the official car of our officer. And the driver of the car, not our officer, came out to challenge him. There was a scuffle between the two of them.
“The two of them became wounded as a result of the scuffle. And when they took him to the office, they didn’t brutalise him. They only brought him to the office for the driver to drop off our officer. And they went to the police station afterwards. They wanted to detain him, but it was the same officer that asked them to let him go.”
However, the Divisional Crime Officer at Onikan Police Division, identified simply as Mr Adesanya, could not be reached for a comment as his mobile phone rang out on both Wednesday and Friday.
