Alakufo—Kazeem Oladepo, the Commander of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, Ajeromi Ifelodun Command, has reiterated their resolve never to close their eyes and allow bad boys to keep disturbing the peace of the people of Ajeromi Ifelodun local government, especially at odd hours of the night.
He recounts different challenges he has encountered since taking over the command from the late Commander Ezekiel Oguntoye. Alakufo recalls three times that he has been arrested and detained at different police stations, not that he did anything illegal or outside of his job details, one of which was at Area B Command, Panti Police, and the Police Station at Second Rainbow.
“I was taken to Area B because of our mediation on the tricycle issue, which the owners used to do ‘shara’ at night. It happened that two friends pulled money together to buy the tricycle for night operations and suddenly the second friend opted out of the job and asked his friend for a refund of his invested sum, the friend promised to refund him in three days and while we await the three days promise, the next thing we saw was Area B Patrol vehicle stormed our quarters to arrest us”, claiming VGN has no right to detain another person’s property in our office and that we have no right to use handcuffs and I tell you, we pushed the tricycle from Ajeromi to Apapa and at Area B, they asked me to sit on the bare floor and all this happened at Ramadan season when we were fasting but on appeals, I was released after hours of delay
Continuing, the Commander recalled how he encountered a woman in his neighborhood indebted to another woman to the tune of one hundred and fifty thousand naira the debtor denied owning anybody and both were invited and the debtor was interrogated and touched by my boys to get the truth and the next thing has we heard our names on the radio news that we tortured a woman and they transferred the matter to panti police division who served us an invitation letter and the initial two Million being requested by the husband was reduced toN560,000 because Panti said we are also serving Nigeria and till now we are still paying the money.
At another time, he said, “we had gone to the Abukuru area of Ajeromi with the police against some bad eggs in the society very late at night and we met them smoking hemp we shot in the air and they scampered to safety and we began to arrest the ones we could lay our hands on to the awaiting police patrol vehicle and I didn’t know the vehicle is filled and every other person had hopped back to the vehicle leaving only me and the bad boys from their hideout swarmed on me and they dealt with me and one of them suggested they remove my teeth and before you know it, they brought pliers and they forcefully removed my teeth with the pliers and I managed to escape to treat myself
He challenged people complaining about insecurity in our communities to show how they are encouraging the neighbourhood security, and how many of them appreciate the security because the security people are humans like them and they do not have a duplicate life. I know how many of the security men who had died on this security job and others received spiritual attack
Do they want all the security operatives to die, in which case I ask them to bring their family members to come and do security work?
Giving credence to the Security operatives, the Commander said, “Frankly speaking, our security people are trying, though people exaggerate the security issues, but the truth remains that we cannot do more than our power as securitymen.
“I know what I and my men face daily with Giddan Drammar people, these bad boys that go there and they return at very odd hours in large numbers, and we confront them and arrest many of them and hand them to the police”.
Gidan Drammar is a notorious place after the Federal Press near Boundary, notably called Agbo Malu, the bad boys and girls go there to do assorted drugs every night and return at unholy hours, but frankly,
During the last Ramadan, they killed two people in the Boundary area, and people were asking Where is the Vigilante group Then I called out my men against the Giddan Drammar school people, and the same people that were calling for our help started saying Vigilante actions are too much
Sincerely, I and my men are not discouraged in any way by these challenges we face, VGN WILL JOIN HANDS with every positive forward-looking member of the society to maintain peace and security in our neighborhoods and that is what we volunteered for.
