SARS operatives extort N20,000 from arrested teenager’s physically challenged mother

Three unidentified operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad have allegedly extorted N20,000 from a physically challenged mother of a 19-year-old boy, Victor Emeka Prosper.
The SARS operatives had earlier arrested Prosper in the Ikeja Along area for allegedly being a perpetrator of cybercrime, otherwise known as “Yahoo Yahoo boy.”
Prosper was said to be on errand for his mother, Ms. Josephine Obasi, a physically challenged single mother of four, when he was arrested by the SARS operatives at about 12noon and whisked away to the Ikorodu Police Division, located several kilometres away from where he was apprehended.
But inspite of having established the innocence of the teenager, the SARS operatives were alleged to have insisted that the teenager should “bail” himself by giving them some money before they would set him free.
Since he was unable to “settle them,” he was asked to contact his parents to pay for his release.
Following the SARS officers’ insistence on collecting money from the victim, they drove him along with other arrested suspects to the Ikorodu Police Division.
But at the police division, the SARS operatives demand, which was initially pegged at N10,000, was raised to N50,000.
Prosper, who had been dispossessed of his phone, later managed to use a spare device to call his mother to notify her of the development.
The single mother of four then contacted her son’s office (Christ Embassy Church), where they made N20,000 available for her to address the issue.
The victim’s mother, Josephine Obasi, told our correspondent at her Ikeja residence, “When I got to the station, the officers said I should go and bring N50,000.
“I told them that I didn’t have up to that; that it was only N15,000 I had on me. I asked what happened and they told me that although my son was not a bad boy, he must drop some money for them. They later told me to bring N40,000 and I said I didn’t have that, too. While I was there, I saw them counting money, going to about N500,000. They were just counting money. I begged them till around 10pm, before they collected all the N20,000 I had on me, and I was left with just N40.
“They told my son that he was a nice boy; that whenever he suspects any boy in his area, who is into Yahoo Yahoo, he should notify them and they would give him his own share.”
She alleged that the SARS operatives later gave N1000 to enable her and her son to pay transport fare back home.
When our correspondent contacted Prosper, the teenager who expressed fears over the incident, stressed that he would not want to further drag his mother and kid sisters into “SARS
problem.”