20-Year-Old Phone Seller Recounts Fatal Encounter With Police Officer

By Sherif Salau

A routine police stop-and-search operation along Olugbede Street in Egbeda, Lagos, ended in tragedy after a 20-year-old phone seller, Olusola Olumide, allegedly fled from police officers and fatally knocked down Sergeant Johnson Okediji.

According to the Lagos State Police Command, the sergeant was knocked down and dragged underneath the vehicle for several metres. Fellow officers and passers-by shouted and tried to force the driver to stop, but the car continued. Okediji sustained multiple fractures and severe head injuries. He was rushed to a nearby hospital and later referred to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His body has been deposited at the Mainland Hospital Mortuary for autopsy.

Olumide was pursued, arrested, and the vehicle recovered. During a subsequent media briefing by Commissioner of Police Tijani Fatai, the young man offered his account of the events. He claimed the brakes failed at the critical moment. “The brake failed. The brake didn’t work,” he said, displaying cuts and injuries he said he sustained when he fell from the car. “He was in the front of the car and the brake failed and it hit his leg and was dragging him.”

Police maintain that Olumide initially complied with the stop order before speeding off as the sergeant drew near. The incident has drawn attention both to the risks officers face during roadside operations in Lagos and to the thin line between a traffic stop and irreversible tragedy.

For the family of Sergeant Okediji, the afternoon ended in irreversible loss. For Olumide, a young man whose livelihood involves selling phones, the encounter has placed him at the centre of a homicide investigation. The police say the case will proceed through the courts. An autopsy is expected to provide further medical detail on the cause of death.

In a city where stop-and-search operations are a daily feature of policing, the events on Olugbede Street serve as a stark reminder of how quickly ordinary enforcement can turn deadly. Both the officer who approached the vehicle and the young driver behind the wheel left that stretch of road with lives permanently altered.