A monarch in Osun State, Dr. Olapade Agoro, yesterday dragged the
state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Fimihan Adeoye, before the High Court
of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, over the alleged embarrassment
caused him by the police.
Agoro, who is also the patriarch of Aladura Church and the Owa Tapa
of Ijesha, claimed that the CP, in a press interview he granted in
September, maligned his person, good reputation and business interests.
The commissioner of police had been quoted in a newspaper report to
have accused Agoro of concocting lies against the Osun State Police
Command so as to escape being taken to court for some alleged criminal
and traffic offences.
According to the report, Agoro had earlier accused some policemen
from the Osun State Police Command of handcuffing a bus passenger to a
police patrol van in Itapa and extorting money from him following the
escape of the driver of the bus from a police checkpoint.
In his suit, Agoro said the CP maligned him and, therefore, urged the
court to award N1m in damages in his favour against the police boss.
Agoro, who sued the Osun State CP, Adeoye, along with the
Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, urged the court to restrain
the police from “further harassing, embarrassing and extorting bribe
from him.”
He is also urging the court to make an order compelling the
defendants to publish an apology to the plaintiff and which words of
apology must first be seen and approved by the honourable court before
publication on the front pages of three national newspapers.
In his statement of claim, Agoro claimed that rather than commending
him for calling for the probe of “the criminals in police uniform” who
allegedly handcuffed a passenger to their Hilux van, the CP “woefully
derailed by telling unfounded lies against my good name and global
respect in Nigeria and the whole world in the story published as,
“Handcuffed passenger: Police accuse monarch of mischief.”