A sixty-five-year-old woman, Mrs Agnes Ezekiel (real name withheld), has revealed how she paid N1.5million to officers of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Edo State Command before she was released from detention after spending three weeks.
Ezekiel was arrested alongside deceased Titilayo Akindele in Ogida Quarters, Benin City, Edo State, for allegedly having substances suspected to be cannabis.
The revelation followed the death of Akindele while waiting for arraignment at the Federal High Court sitting in Benin.City on March 31, 2026. She said. “When they arrested me, I was not with anything, but they used another person’s market to take me pictures.
“I saw some people pay N8million for bail, others pay N7million, N5million, and I paid N1.5 million to come out from their detention. There was a girl we met there, whether she had been bailed or not, I don’t know, but she was there for six months, a very small girl, they said, they saw cannabis with her.”
Corroborating the claims by Mrs.Ezekiel, husband to the deceased Titilayo, Mr. Adebayo Bashiru said he went to the office of the agency with his son, Samuel, to negotiate for his late wife’s bail, but they demanded N5million from them. He said they were able to get N500,000 but they rejected it.
“The people who arrested her asked us to go and bring N2million. But we could not get the money, they transferred her to NDLEA. The the NDLEA people said we should go and bring N5 million; that was when we slacked, because we don’t have that money.
After running around, we could only get N500,000. We got there but they were harassing us. One of them said I should talk to his boss. We met a man in a bigger office, and the man said that they had not seen the report of the officer who arrested her, that they were waiting for the officer. Then, the boss said that if the money is not up to N3million, we should forget it.”
Reacting, a human rights lawyer, Douglas Ogbankwa, condemned the abuse and human rights violations by security operatives. He frowned at the persistent impunity, unlawful detention practices allegedly perpetrated by officials of the NDLEA across Nigeria.
