A Digbolukolu local Security Outfit member identified as Ezekiel, alias Baba Malu, has reportedly been tortured to death by his colleagues at the premises of the Langbasa Health Centre in Lagos State’s Ajah district.
According to reports, personnel of the Eti-Osa East Local Council Development Area’s security outfit accused Ezekiel of snatching a phone during an event in the community on Monday, June 26, 2023.
To chastise him, the leader of the security outfit, Olaide Taofik, allegedly instructed members of the outfit to tie Ezekiel up and beat him up in the security organization’s guardroom on the premises of the Langbasa Health Centre.
According to a local source, after Ezekiel was tortured, members of the security group allegedly abandoned and starved him for two days until he got unconscious and died on June 28, 2023.
The source said, “Members of the security outfit attended an event on Monday and Ezekiel saw a phone and kept it. Unknown to him, the battery of the phone was low and by the time he approached the leader to inform him, the phone was already dead.
“That was how he was accused of switching off the phone in an attempt to convert it to personal use. The leader of the group ordered Ezekiel’s colleagues to take him to a guardroom attached to their office in the council’s primary health centre at Lamgbasa. They tied him and started to torture him in the guardroom. He begged to be released but was not allowed to leave.
“After he was beaten, Ezekiel started to complain that he was weak but despite his complaints, he was left unattended to. It was later in the day that he died. After he died, the leader of the group did not tell anyone until Thursday when he started to tell people that Ezekiel died of a natural cause. It was also on that same Thursday that the police came to arrest them.”
According to the source, the LCDA Chairman, John Ogundare, went to the police station on Friday to bail the suspects out, but the police re-arrested them on Monday.
Confirming the incident, the administrative head of the security organization, who identified himself only as Adedayo, informed our correspondent that the suspects who allegedly tortured the deceased were re-arrested by police officials from the State Criminal Investigation Department in the state’s Yaba area.
“All that you said about what they did is true. Though I was not around when the incident happened, it was when I returned from the trip that I got to know about it,” Adedayo said.
Commenting on the torture that led to Ezekiel’s death, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, the state Police Public Relations Officer, stated that “One person died and the six suspects have been arrested and taken to the State Criminal Investigation Department”.
