No fewer than 20 policemen guarding the Lagos State House of Assembly in the Alausa area of the state brutalised two PUNCH journalists, Femi Dawodu and Segun Odunayo, who were covering the #EndSARS events on Wednesday.
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Tuesday declared a 24-hour curfew to stem the tide of the growing violence in the state but allowed those on essential services such as health workers, security operatives, and journalists to carry out their legitimate duties.
Dawodu and Odunayo had gone to cover events around the Alausa area, a major demonstration ground for protesters.
PUNCH Metro gathered that the duo was making a live recording of the activities in the area when the policemen accosted them and ordered them to stop recording.
After showing the policemen their identity cards, the policemen became annoyed and pounced on them.
Odunayo said the policemen tortured them for four hours, adding that the cops stripped them of their clothes, laid them on the floor, beat them with sticks and guns, and took a video recording of them while torturing them at the Lagos State House of Assembly.
Odunayo said, “Femi (Dawodu) and I were at the secretariat in Alausa around 7am and we were doing a live video of the activities going on in the area. We were heading back for the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when a group of armed policemen accosted us at the Lagos State House of Assembly roundabout and immediately collected our phones. We showed them our ID cards but they refused to let us go.
“What got the policemen annoyed was that we saw them using stick and rubber to beat a young man and during the live video, they heard me saying that they were beating someone. So, after they arrested us, they tortured us and demanded that we should do another live video denying our earlier statement, but we refused.
“Each time we refused, they slapped us, used a stick and the butt of their guns to hit our heads and bodies after stripping us of our clothes. All they wanted was for us to do another live broadcast to claim that we lied, but we refused because we said the truth.”
Dawodu said it took the intervention of the state Police Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, before they were released at the Alausa Police Station, adding that prior to their release, the policemen took their details, including their addresses, and threatened to go after them if any negative report was published about what transpired.
