I met Quadri Alabi, the child of destiny, on Tuesday, at the News Central TV in Ogba, Ikeja. They – Quadri, his lawyer, Inibehe Effiong and Ms. Hassana Nurudeen, co-founder of Ray of Hope Prisoner Outreach – were coming out of the studios after an interview as I was stepping in for the newspaper review segment of the same breakfast programme.

I held the young lad’s hand, looked into his eyes and wished him well and shook hands with Inibehe, who I thanked for his labour of love.

I didn’t watch the interview live but the breakfast crew of Olive Emodi, Joe Hanson and Gbenga Aborowa, told me it is a must watch. And having watched the video clip, I concur. It is one interview every well-meaning Nigerian should watch because it speaks to the real issues of our law enforcement’s ruination – the fact that the police, the country’s primary law enforcement agency is not fit for purpose.

I referred to Quadri as a child of destiny because right from the day he intuitively jumped in front of Mr. Peter Obi’s campaign convoy in 2023, he came across as someone destined for a divine purpose. If you ask him, as I did last Tuesday, why he did what he did on that fateful day, you will not get an answer just as I didn’t.

During the interview, Hassana Nurudeen said the NGO, which she co-founded with Stephen Oguyinka, together with one Oyiga Michael, a social media influencer, organised a football match at the Kirikiri Correctional Centre between Twitter Influencers and Kirikiri inmates.

It was at that event, part of the group’s prison outreach, that she met a guy called Jonathan, who had been in detention for about four months because he was owing someone N1.2 million. After the match, the NGO did crowd funding to raise the money and secured Jonathan’s freedom.

It was in the course of a thank-you-visit that Jonathan told Hassana that the boy who stood in front of Peter Ob’s convoy was actually his prison mate. She called Quadri’s mother on phone and the distraught woman confirmed his son’s ordeal. She took the case to the court of public opinion by escalating it in the social media, which, by the way, the Sultan of Sokoto recently described as a tool worse than a terrorist organisation. A pity!

When the story went viral on Twitter, many Nigerians, including Peter Obi, called Inibehe to intervene. And he did. After interfacing with Hassana and convincing himself that it was a case of persecution, he took remedial steps to ensure that Quadri regained freedom.

First, he escalated the matter by bringing it to the attention of the appropriate authorities, before proceeding to the court to find out the status of the case, after which he applied for the necessary documentations and then made an application to the Apapa Magistrate Court where the Magistrate who had earlier scheduled the case for April 28 agreed to hear it on April 17. Then the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecution, DPP, Babajide Martins, reviewed the case file and found out “for a fact that truly Quadri had no case to answer.” There was no evidence to support his arrest or the effort to prosecute him for armed robbery. With the DPP’s advisory, Inibehe and his team went back to the court and the Magistrate implemented the advice and Quadri was accordingly discharged.

Inibehe didn’t just jump on the case to chase clout. “I carried out my own personal investigation. I don’t jump on cases because they have gone viral or become sensational. Before I get on any matter, I must have personal conviction and I must have done due diligence. I met with Quadri at the Kirikiri Correctional Centre and had an interview with him for over two hours and thereafter spoke with his mother. I did everything as a lawyer to have them contradict themselves but they were consistent and the sequence of events supported their position. I was convinced thereafter that this was another case of abuse of power by the police,” Inibehe told his interviewers.

What did the police do to investigate the case? Nothing! And if not for providence, Quadri would still be in prison today just as there are hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people languishing in jail for crimes they knew nothing about. Hassana said the NGO secured the release of about 22 inmates who were wrongfully accused and jailed since 2022. In 2024, they secured the release of two minors, one of them a 15-year-old lad who had spent about 10 years in prison unjustifiably.

And what was Quadri’s crime? The touts in his neck of the woods thought he must have made a heck of a fortune after his day in the sun in 2023 and wanted their share. The baale of the Amukoko community where they lived not only joined in the conspiracy but summoned Quadri’s mother, threatening that if the money that had allegedly been given to her son was not split in two, she wouldn’t see him again. What did the police do to investigate this? Nothing!

On the day Quadri was arrested, he was coming back from work and didn’t know that there had been a fight earlier in the day in the neighbourhood. The touts stole his phone and money before handing him over to the police who locked him up in a cell with four strangers. In the morning when the complainants – a man and his wife – came to the police station, the suspects were paraded and they couldn’t identify him. Yet, the police at Amukoko Police Station detained him for a week before charging him to court in January. In Kirikiri prison, because he couldn’t afford to pay the marshall, he was subjected to the indignity of cleaning up faeces from morning until 6pm.

Inibehe, who insists that Quadri’s case is a painful example of the putrefying corruption, monstrous impunity, and pervasive injustice in the Nigeria Police Force, demanded that the Lagos State Police Commissioner, Jimoh Moshood, and Inspector General of Police should, as a matter of urgency, remove the DPO of Amukoko Divisional Headquarters, CSP Ismaila Olaniyi and subject him to orderly room trial along with the Investigating Police Officer, IPO, Inspector Odigbe Samuel, and other officers who participated in what he called the “evil, sinister, oppressive, and corrupt scheme of framing-up a teenager for armed robbery at the behest of rogue Area Boys.” He also demanded a N100 million compensation and public apology from the police.

“There are many Quadris languishing in detention centres across Nigeria because of the unbridled criminality, lawlessness, and lack of accountability in the Police institution and the weakness of the justice system. History will vindicate the just,” he said.

But CP Jimoh Moshood, would have none of that. Insisting that Quadri’s statement after arrest indicated that he was 18 years and not 17, he emphasized that no one was above the law, regardless of age. “I personally checked the record at Amukoko Police Station. He wrote down his age as 18, and that is the basis on which we proceeded with the investigation.”

Pooh-poohing Quadri’s birth certificate presented by Inibehe, Moshood said the documents must be verified. “The best person to confirm someone’s age is their parent. A birth certificate or affidavit of age declaration must be thoroughly investigated. These days, with AI and digital tools, anything can be fabricated.”

The irony is that the police neither verified the documents nor sought clarification from Quadri’s mother.

But his argument sounded hollow, as always. Anyone who knows Moshood right from his days as the Force Public Relations Officer will not be surprised because he is one officer with whom every conversation sooner than later runs off the rails. With him, well-reasoned arguments might as well be whispers in the wind and no matter how compelling the points are, they won’t get through. So, Nigerians need not bother with his defence of the indefensible.

But it is sad that even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, CP Moshood is still lying about the facts of the matter. First, his claim that the DPO personally arrested Quadri after receiving a distress call is a lie. It is also not true that Quadri made a confessional statement as claimed by Moshood who should know that by law, as ruled by the Supreme Court, if someone is to make a statement that may implicate him, it must either be on video or in the presence of a counsel.

But what I found most bizarre is Moshood’s rage that Inibehe took Quadri to a “presidential candidate after his discharge.”

Warning that politics should not be mixed with criminal investigations, he said: “If someone commits a crime, it doesn’t matter if they are close to a presidential candidate or a media personality—they should face the law… When the boy was asked to go, the lawyer took him to that presidential candidate first.”

That got me thinking. Could it be that the reason the police framed a 17-year-old minor for armed robbery was because of his presumed association with Peter Obi, the political establishment’s bête noire? That, indeed, is the tragedy of Nigeria under President Bola Tinubu’s watch.