Smugglers batter journalist to coma inside customs office

Kunle Awosiyan |

The Executive Director and Chairman Editorial Board of a news magazine, Badagry Prime, Otunba Yomi Olomofe slightly escaped death at the weekend when scores of hoodlums believed to be smugglers attacked him at SEME Border.

The senior journalists was assaulted and beaten to coma by the hoodlums who besieged the premises of Nigerian Customs office in a bid to prevent a reporter from investigating a story.

Narrating his ordeal at a news conference on Sunday, Olomofe who had just been discharged from the hospital said he was at the customs office on an invitation by the Assistant Comptroller; (Import Operation) Ibrahim Turaki when about 14 fiercely looking mobs waylaid him.

As he put it, “Turaki had invited me to intervene in a story being investigated by a reporter of Tide Newspaper on Thursday June 25. I met the reporter at Turaki’s office and we had good discussion. I left Turaki’s office around 4:45 pm but met the hell of my life after the meeting. The hoodlums came from nowhere and descended on me.”

Olomofe explained that he could only hear different voices of the hoodlums shouting, kill him, kill him as the thugs hit him with different kinds of weapons and blows.

He later passed on but the intervention of the custom officers who shot sporadically into the air saved Olomofe’s life as the hoodlums fled, leaving the journalist in the pool of his blood.

Olomofe who was the past Chairman of Rotary Club of Ajara was quickly rushed to a nearby clinic the Care Hospital in Badagry where he was resuscitated.

According to Olomofe, the Tide’s reporter was investigating some cases of financial impropriety and criminal activities of the smugglers at SEME Border, which the hoodlums would not want it to be published in any of the national dailies.

An eye witness, who spoke to Hallmark News on the condition of anonymity identified leader of the hoodlums as Alhaji Momoh, popular known as Basket and his deputies simply called Shehu and Elijah.

According to the eye witness, these hoodlums are popular smugglers in Badagry who would not allow journalists to do their normal job of reporting. “The customs have colluded with them and they would not mind to kill anybody while perpetrating their nefarious activities. They have battered many journalists here and government has done nothing to arrest the situation,” the eye witness said.

Calling on the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, the journalist said that his life was being threatened by the smugglers and that he would need protection from the police.

Olomofe lives in Badagry with his family but added that he could not sleep in his house due to death threat he had been receiving from the smugglers.

When Hallmark News contacted Turaki through his mobile line, the phone has been switched off  but Badagry police station confirmed the incident and promised to thoroughly  investigate  it.