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The Nigeria Customs Service, Oyo/Osun Area Command has denied that its personnel shot a member of the proscribed National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Iseyin on Friday.
It would be recalled that a Customs officer reportedly shot an NURTW executive, identified as Lateef Aboki at Iseyin-Moniya motor park in Iseyin, which sparked outrage from members of the union.
But the Command’s Public Relations Officer, Abdulahi Lagos-Abiola, while speaking on Fresh 105.9 FM programme, Crossfire, said that the officers involved in the incident were not from the Command, adding that the officers were from Federal Operation Unit, Zone A of the Service.
He said: “I can tell you outrightly, there is no way the Oyo-Osun Command would be involved in such activity. I can assure you that none of our residents would be involved in such kind of engagement. On the contrary to what people actually thought that it was from Oyo-Osun command, they are officers from the Federal Operation Unit Zone A, they were not from Osun-Oyo Command. It is difficult for us to really have clear understanding of what happened.However, what happened was surprising and worrisome because the people of Iseyin have been working with our Oyo-Osun officers without any rift.
“Immediately the incident reached us, the Comptroller of the command, Mrs. Uche Ngozi gave a directive to the resident officers at Iseyin to quickly intervene in order to restore normalcy with the police around the area.
“We want to state categorically that the officers involved in the incident were not from our command, they are officers from Federal Operation Unit, Zone A deployed to the command to carry out their own statutory responsibility.
“The Federal Operation Unit are to complement the job of resident officers of each command, Federal Operation are deployed to each command and we have been working hand in hand but they are answerable to the Federal Operation Unit, Ikeja, they don’t take directives from us, meanwhile, they still work hand in hand in collaboration with us.”