Customs Men Go Beserk: Assault mobile court magistrates, own boss … Abduct policeman
BY FELIX MORDI
But for divine providence and extreme sense of maturity and resilience displayed by two Lagos State Magistrates, the unruly act of of hostility and attack on officials of Lagos State Mobile Courts by men of the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) would have resulted to bloody clash.
Crimepuzzle gathered that officials of the Lagos State Mobile Court had Friday morning moved towards FOU office in Ikeja and saw some vehicles parked on unauthorized places (marked as restricted area by Customs) and ordered that their number plates be removed, ostensibly for the owners to appear before the court for explanation.
While trying to enforce the order, some customs men swiftly emerged from their office and swooped on the policemen attached to the court, and gave them serious beatings.
As if not satisfied with that, they made for the Mobile Court and physically assaulted the magistrates, even as a deputy superintendent of police who was detailed by the Chairman of the state’s Taskforce on Environmental Sanitation, SP Yinka Egbeyemi, got his own share of the bitter pills.
It was also gathered that the unruly, uncourteous and rampaging customs men did not spare their own boss, an assistant controller, of the equal measure of slaps, for condemning their action.
However, the arrival of a detachment of policemen from Ikeja Division made little or no impact on the situation as the battle-ready customs men abducted a policeman.
The police on their own successfully abducted two operatives of the customs.
Meanwhile, information reaching crimepuzzle is that the state government may not take it lightly with customs authority as, according to an inpeccable official source, Lagos State Attorney-General was particularly furious on hearing the incident.
The FOU Public Relations Officer, simply identified as Atta, could not be reached for comments.