Report Any Officer Who Searches Your Phone – Police PRO To Nigerians

Nigerians have been urged to report any police officer who asks to search through their phones because it is unprofessional.

The Nigeria Police Force Public Relations Officer, ACP Olumuyiwa Adejobi, enlightened citizens when he took to X, formerly Twitter, to react to a video of police officers searching through the phone of a passenger.

According to the Force PRO, searching through people’s phones is unprofessional, so any officer caught doing that should be reported to the authorities for disciplinary action.

The Publisher Nigeria has gathered that an X user @tadeosun074 had posted the video where a police officer was seen searching through the phone of a young male passenger.

In the video, the officer could be heard saying in Pidgin language, “Me that has been working for over 13 years now, this year will make me 14 years in service, I have never had money to buy N250,000 phone, it is N15,000 phone I’m using.”

The officer went ahead to command the young man to bring out his bag from the commercial bus saying, “Go that way, come, carry your bag. I say carry your bag and come down!” 

While reacting to this,  the Force spokesperson said, “When you share items like this, do us good to mention location, if possible, date and time. It makes it easier to trace them. This info is scanty. So we need more info on this.”

Responding to Adejobi’s reaction, another X user, @KJexty, said that he had also once been a victim of such an incident.

The X user wrote, “Police are still doing this at Okpella, Edo state and Okene (Kogi state) road when traveling to Abuja. I was a victim here last week, and I paid 100,000 just to free myself.”

The Force PRO then said, “We will continue to go after the erring policemen who are bent on tarnishing the image of the force. Checking people’s phones on the road is not proper.

“In fact, it’s highly unprofessional. I am sure you know we have reacted and condemned it severely. So, report them to us, and we will take such cases up.”