Police arrest officer filmed harassing motorist over tinted permit

“We will fish them out and do the needful for Nigerians to know that those ones are unfaithful, unpatriotic, and deviant.”

The police in Lagos State have arrested an officer who was captured in a viral video harassing a motorist over tinted permit.

An online publication, Lagosspy which broke the news of the officer’s arrest, identified him as Dele Reuben, a police inspector.

The report, which did not state when Mr Reuben was arrested, said the officer was “currently undergoing disciplinary procedures” at the police headquarters in Lagos State.

The acting spokesperson of the force headquarters, Abuja, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, shared on Twitter the paper’s report of Mr Reuben’s arrest.

“We will fish them out and do the needful for Nigerians to know that those ones are unfaithful, unpatriotic, and deviant,” Mr Adejobi said in another tweet, shortly after.

“The present leadership of IGP Usman Alkali Baba will not condone indiscipline and inappropriate behaviours from any quarters of the NPF,” he added.

“I’ve promised to name and shame them; some people can’t be denting the image of the police just because they think they are unknown or could not be traced. No way,” he said in another tweet.

The police spokesperson had before now informed Nigerians via Twitter that the police had banned the issuance of tinted glass permits, and therefore officers are not to demand tinted permits from motorists.

“This order on tinted glass permits is not new, it’s been there since June 2021. Every policeman knows that issuance of tinted glass permits has been on suspension by the police.

“Now you know what I am saying. Expose them because those who demand it are deviants,” he said in one of tweets.

The clip

The officer is seen in the one minutes, six seconds clip telling the driver “go and face the wrath of the law”, apparently directing him to drive the car to a police station.

“I am a tax-paying citizen, so there’s no wrath of the law,” the driver responded, confidently.

Mr Reuben then told the driver angrily that he was dealing with “a senior police officer”, referring to himself.

The video was uploaded on Twitter on March 21 by a user, @OsasenagaEno, who appeared to be the driver who had the encounter with the officer.

“This guy claimed that the penalty for not having a permit was N100k and we needed to go to the station. Quoted imaginary sections of an Act to buttress his point. At the station in Ikeja they made me pay a fine of N20k without issuing a receipt,” the Twitter user who uploaded the video said in his comment on the micro-blogging site.