17-year-old Quadri Yusuf Alabi, who became famous in 2023 after standing in front of the convoy of Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, has finally regained his freedom from detention.
Alabi was discharged on Thursday after Magistrate Olorunfemi confirmed the legal advice issued by Babajide Martins, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) at the Lagos State Ministry of Justice, showed that there was no evidence to substantiate the allegation of armed robbery against him.
According to Inibehe Effiong, Alabi’s lawyer who shared the development on X, the teenager had been held at the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Kirikiri, on a trumped-up charge of armed robbery.
He said that Lege and Baba Waris, two notorious street urchins in Alabi’s area of residence in Amukoko, Lagos, abducted him and dumped him at the Amukoko Divisional Police Headquarters (Pako Police Station) while he was returning from work in January.
He added that the duo and other entitled street urchins in the community had been harassing Alabi and threatening to deal with him for not giving them “their share” of donations gifted to him during the 2023 election.
Effiong also said that Alabi’s family told him the community’s Baale also pressured them to buy a cow and rice to cook for the community in order to appease the area boys.
“The abductors initially told the officers at Amukoko Police Station that our client (Alabi) was involved in street fighting. To the consternation of Quadri and his family, the police, on January 26, 2025, took Alabi before a magistrate in Apapa and obtained an order remanding him at the Medium Security Custodial Centre, Kirikiri, on a trumped-up charge of armed robbery,” Effiong posted on X.
“The police fraudulently joined Alabi with four strange adults who had no form of connection or relationship whatsoever with him and claimed that the four men were his case mates. As part of the diabolical frame-up of our client, the officers at Amukoko Police Station also misrepresented his age as 18, knowing that disclosing his actual age would likely raise eyebrows.”
Effiong, who is now demanding that the police pay N100 million in compensation to Alabi, also called for a public apology from the police.
“We demand that the Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Command, and the Inspector General of Police, should, as a matter of urgency, remove the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of the Amukoko Divisional Headquarters and subject him to an orderly room trial along with the IPO, one Inspector Odigbe Samuel, and other officers who participated in this evil, sinister, oppressive, and corrupt scheme of framing a teenager for armed robbery at the behest of rogue area boys,” said Effiong.
