The Nigerian Police Force (NPF) has advised Nigerians to report any officers who request to search their phones, saying the behaviour is considered unprofessional and a violation of personal privacy.

This was contained in a statement issued by the Police Force Public Relations Officer, ACP Olumuyiwa Adejobi, via his X page while reacting to a video showing police officers searching a passenger’s phone.

New Telegraph reports that an X user @tadeosun074 had posted the video where a police officer was seen searching through the phone of a young male passenger.

In the video, the officer could be heard saying in Pidgin language, “Me that has been working for over 13 years now, this year will make me 14 years in service, I have never had money to buy N250,000 phone, it is N15,000 phone I’m using.”

The officer went ahead to command the young man to bring out his bag from the commercial bus saying, “Go that way, come, carry your bag. I say carry your bag and come down!”

While reacting to this the Force PPRO said searching through people’s phones is considered unprofessional, and any police officer caught engaging in such behaviour should be reported to the appropriate authorities for disciplinary action.

He said, “When you share items like this, do us good to mention location, if possible, date and time. It makes it easier to trace them. This info is scanty. So we need more info on this.”

Responding to Adejobi’s reaction, another X user, @KJexty, said that he had also once been a victim of such an incident.

The X user wrote, “Police are still doing this at Okpella, Edo state and Okene (Kogi state) road when travelling to Abuja. I was a victim here last week, and I paid 100,000 just to free myself.”

The Force PRO then said, “We will continue to go after the erring policemen who are bent on tarnishing the image of the force. Checking people’s phones on the road is not proper.

“In fact, it’s highly unprofessional. I am sure you know we have reacted and condemned it severely. So, report them to us, and we will take such cases up.”

Let me just leave the video as an example, bcos for every reaction from Nigerians as it concerns the police, there’s a context.

The police enjoys Profiling ns…now you see through their lenses how it feels as they profile the pweety DSP by the expensive phone she’s holding https://t.co/V87uERAPpP pic.twitter.com/ix5yGm4d3r

— Dann_essy 20:10:2020 (@Dann_10) September 30, 2023

(New Telegraph: Text, Excluding Headline)

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