On August 30, 2025, Mr Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), was assaulted by police officers at the Ikeja Police Command in Lagos, when he went to meet with the Complaints Response Unit (CRU) over a report that some policemen had extorted money from detainees.
According to Mr Ojukwu, three policemen assaulted him when he approached the Squad 1 office to ask to see the accused officers. They seized his phone and began going through it. As they scrolled through his phone, Mr Ojukwu informed them that their action was a breach of his privacy, but they refused to yield; instead, they continued to scroll through his phone. One of the officers, in mufti, shoved him out of the office.
However, the journalist managed to snatch his phone from one of the officers but he was violently beaten. One of them grabbed Mr Ojukwu by the head, forced it down and drove his knee into Ojukwu’s face, shattering his glasses and leaving him disoriented.
About six other policemen descended on and clawed at him to wrestle the phone from his hand. In the fracas, he was injured in his left arm, his wristwatch was ripped off, and a SIM card slipped from his phone pouch.
When they finally repossessed the locked phone, they dragged him into another office where a policeman pulled out a machete and threatened to hack him.
The machete-wielding policeman allegedly threatened, “I will cut off your neck now. You think here is child’s play?”
The journalist was later moved to the second-in-command’s office, and while he waited outside, he complained of shortness of breath. But in response, one of the officers told him: “You will die here, and the autopsy will show asthma killed you, not police brutality”.
Another asked him: “Do you think here is child’s play?
When Mr Benjamin Hundeyin, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), arrived at the office, the policemen admitted to dragging Ojukwu’s phone off him and assaulting him, but claimed he had broken the law by taking a picture on the premises.
Meanwhile, Ojukwu turned down the offer from Mr Hundeyin to replace his damaged property and pay him compensation, but demanded the opportunity to file an official complaint against the men who attacked him.
