A new Rivers police account clears CP Olugbenga Adepoju of personally taking Victory Estate land while conceding that officers protected an execution later found, according to the command, to have been carried out beyond the judgment’s survey boundaries. The paper trail now raises harder questions about police oversight, land enforcement and the arrest of activist Mezie.
The most consequential part of the Rivers State Police Command’s latest statement is not the denial that Commissioner of Police Olugbenga Adepoju grabbed land.
It is the Command’s own account that a valid court judgment was used in an attempted execution on property the judgment did not cover.
That distinction changes the central question.
The dispute is no longer simply whether CP Adepoju personally acquired land in Victory Estate, Rumuosi, Obio/Akpor.
It is whether the machinery of the state was deployed to protect the execution of a judgment before the precise location covered by that judgment had been adequately established — and what safeguards should have prevented that from happening.
The Rivers State Police Command, in a statement issued on Monday by its spokesperson, ASP Agabe Blessing Kaborlo, described allegations that Adepoju grabbed or facilitated the grabbing of Victory Estate land as “false and misleading”. It said the commissioner’s role was limited to providing security for a court bailiff executing what police had verified as a valid judgment.
But the same statement says the execution was stopped after residents challenged the location, and a subsequent investigation found that the judgment did not extend to Victory Estate.
That creates a striking paper trail: valid judgment, police protection, disputed location, halted execution, survey verification, wrongful execution, criminal prosecution.
What the police say happened
According to the Command, the story began on March 6, 2025, when O. S. Obior, acting for Kirigust Global Resources Nigeria Ltd, applied to CP Adepoju for police protection for a court bailiff.
The bailiff was to execute a judgment in Suit No. CCC/22/2015, involving Col. Ogwumerum Eke and another against Chief Friday Ibeabuchi Anya and others.
The request, according to police, was referred first to the Department of Operations and then to the Police Legal Section.
The Customary Court, Choba, was said to have confirmed on March 21, 2025, that the judgment was valid and that there was no pending appeal or stay of execution.
The police then deployed officers on April 7 and 8, 2025.
The Command insists the officers were there for security only.
“Based on the legal advice received, police personnel were deployed on 7 and 8 April 2025 solely to provide security for the court bailiff,” the statement said.
It added that the commissioner had expressly directed the officers “not to participate physically in the execution”.
That distinction matters.
The police are not claiming they executed the judgment. Their position is that they protected the bailiff while the bailiff carried out the court process.
Yet that security presence placed armed state authority around a disputed property during a confrontation over possession.
That is where the boundaries between lawful security and the practical enforcement of a private property claim become critical.
The coordinates became the real dispute
When the operation reached Victory Estate, residents reportedly objected.
Their position, according to the police account, was not that the judgment itself was invalid.
Their objection was more precise.
They said the judgment concerned land in Rumuagholu Community, while the property being acted upon was in Victory Estate, Rumuosi.
The distinction between those two locations became the heart of the controversy.
The Command says Adepoju responded by halting the execution and ordering the Police Legal Section to investigate.
“All relevant parties were invited to state their positions, the disputed location was visited, and photographs of damaged properties were obtained,” it said.
Police then obtained a Certified True Copy of the judgment and the disputed survey/site plan from the Customary Court, Choba.
The documents were forwarded to the Surveyor-General of Rivers State for charting and geo-location.
According to the Command, the Surveyor-General subsequently determined that the survey/site plan fell within Rumuagholu Community and did not cover Victory Estate, Rumuosi.
The police conclusion was therefore unusually clear.
“The investigation therefore established that although the judgment in Suit No. CCC/22/2015 was valid and had no pending appeal or stay of execution, it did not extend to Victory Estate, Rumuosi.”
“Consequently, the execution of the judgment on the said property was considered wrongful.”
That is the most important factual admission contained in the Command’s response.
A judgment can be valid and its execution can still be wrongful if the property being taken over is outside the judgment.
The Assembly investigation adds another layer
The police account is not the only institutional intervention into the Victory Estate dispute.
In July 2026, the Rivers State House of Assembly Committee on Public Petitions conducted an on-site investigation into complaints surrounding the estate.
The committee said it had received multiple petitions concerning the dispute and visited Victory Estate to assess alleged destruction and competing claims.
AIT reported that the committee had received 14 petitions on land grabbing in the area, while local reports said the disputed estate involved more than 6,000 plots.
The committee’s preliminary position, as reported in July, was that the area being claimed by Ogwumerum-Eke appeared to fall outside the scope of the court judgment he relied upon.
The Assembly subsequently urged the parties to maintain peace and refrain from further action while its investigation continued.
That does not amount to a judicial ruling on title.
It does, though, show that the controversy over the geographical reach of the judgment was not confined to social media allegations.
There were competing claims serious enough to attract a legislative fact-finding process.
The police say the fallout became criminal
The Command’s statement goes further.
It says its investigation uncovered alleged criminal offences arising from the wrongful execution.
It named Col. Ogwumerum Eke, Chief Mike Oyakire, Prince Chima Kelechi and Samuel Chike, among others, as persons recommended for prosecution.
The police also said Force Headquarters in Abuja conducted a separate investigation and reportedly reached similar findings.
A nine-count charge, PHC/3683/CR/2025, was subsequently filed before the Rivers State High Court against Eke and others at large, according to the Command.
Those are serious allegations and must remain allegations until established through due process.
The Command’s account is nevertheless significant because it removes one possible ambiguity from the dispute.
Police are not saying the underlying judgment was fabricated.
They are saying the judgment was valid but that, on the Command’s own investigation, it was being applied to the wrong property.
That is a very different proposition.
What the commissioner is denying
Adepoju’s central defence is straightforward.
The Command says he “neither grabbed, acquired nor took possession of any land belonging to Victory Estate, Rumuosi Community”.
His role, according to police, was to approve security for the bailiff after the judgment had been checked.
And when residents raised objections, the Command says he stopped the process rather than allowing the operation to continue.
The police therefore portray the commissioner not as an interested participant in the disputed property claim but as the officer who ultimately ordered the process investigated.
That remains the Command’s account.
The key documentary material behind it — the Certified True Copy, the disputed survey plan, the Surveyor-General’s charting report and the nine-count charge — has not been made available in the publicly searchable material reviewed for this report.
Atlantic Post therefore cannot independently verify the underlying documents or reproduce the technical survey findings from the primary records.
That distinction matters in an investigation involving competing claims over land.
The legal fault line: security is not ownership
Nigerian law draws a significant distinction between maintaining public order and deciding civil property rights.
The Police Act 2020 requires the Nigeria Police Force to prevent and detect crime, protect rights and freedoms, maintain public safety and protect lives and property.
But Nigerian appellate courts have repeatedly warned against turning the police into arbiters of civil land disputes.
In Architect M. M. Peter Ogan v Commissioner of Police, Rivers State & Ors, the Court of Appeal held that the police had gone beyond their powers by becoming involved in determining ownership of landed property. The court declared that the police lacked the authority to determine ownership of the disputed land and restrained further police action tied to that ownership dispute.
That precedent is highly relevant here, although the circumstances are not identical.
The Rivers Command is not saying Adepoju adjudicated who owned Victory Estate.
It is saying the police protected a court bailiff executing a judgment.
That is a narrower role.
The unanswered issue is what level of verification is required when the property on the ground is disputed.
A police officer does not become a land judge simply by providing security.
But the moment armed officers accompany an enforcement operation, the distinction between “security” and “practical enforcement” becomes a matter of public importance.
The Mezie question is still hanging over the case
The land dispute has acquired another dimension because of what happened to public affairs commentator Onwuka Chimezie, popularly known as Mezie.
Reports in early September said Mezie was arrested in Abuja by men identified as officers of the Rivers State Police Command’s Anti-Kidnapping Squad after he criticised Adepoju and made allegations linking the commissioner to the Victory Estate dispute.
Human rights lawyer Marshal Abubakar alleged that the arrest was connected to Mezie’s public comments and accused the commissioner of ordering the detention. Those allegations have not been established by a court.
The Rivers Command subsequently said it was not aware of the arrest and that the allegations concerning the commissioner were being handled by the Force Criminal Investigation Department in Abuja.
Lawyers later petitioned the Inspector-General of Police over the alleged detention.
By September 9, reports indicated that Mezie had been granted bail at the FCID in Abuja, while the IGP was said to have ordered a probe into a separate alleged confrontation involving police officers and his lawyer.
Mezie subsequently alleged that he had witnessed abuses at an Enugu anti-kidnapping facility during the journey following his arrest. Those allegations were not independently verified, and no substantive public police response to all of the claims had been established in the sources reviewed.
The significance for the Victory Estate controversy is not that Mezie’s allegations prove wrongdoing.
They do not.
The significance is that the same land dispute has now generated questions not only about property and police protection, but also about how criticism of a senior police officer was handled.
The latest Rivers statement addresses the first issue at length.
It does not address the second.
The question the police statement does not answer
There is a peculiar tension in the Command’s narrative.
The police say officers were authorised to protect the bailiff because the judgment had been verified.
Yet the same investigation later concluded that the judgment did not cover the property where the execution took place.
That leaves an important operational question.
What exactly was verified before the police deployment?
Was the verification limited to the existence and validity of the judgment?
Or did the legal review also compare the judgment, its survey plan and the physical coordinates of the property where enforcement was proposed to take place?
Those are not the same exercise.
A valid judgment is a legal document.
A survey plan is a location document.
On contested land, both matter.
The police statement tells the public that the first was verified and the second was later subjected to technical charting after residents objected.
That chronology is central to understanding how the controversy developed.
A wider warning for Rivers
The Command has now warned all police officers in Rivers State not to participate in land-related enforcement without proper authorisation and legal backing.
“All police officers in Rivers State have been warned not to go to any land to guard, enforce or execute any land-related matter without proper authorisation and legal backing,” the statement said.
That warning may prove to be one of the most consequential parts of the episode.
Rivers is not alone in facing disputes where land ownership, community boundaries, court judgments, development pressure and the presence of security personnel collide.
When armed officers appear at a disputed property, ordinary residents can find it difficult to distinguish between a legitimate security operation and state-backed possession.
That makes documentation, survey verification and clearly defined police mandates crucial.
The Victory Estate dispute now has several parallel tracks: a contested property battle, a police investigation, a nine-count criminal charge, a Rivers Assembly fact-finding exercise and a separate High Court suit, PHC/1467/FHR/2026, brought by Eke and three others against the police and other defendants. The Command says it will allow the court to determine the issues before it.
The courts will ultimately have to determine the legal issues before them.
But the larger public-interest question is already visible.
If a judgment is valid but its execution reaches land outside the judgment, who is responsible for catching that error before armed state protection is deployed?
And if the error is discovered only after residents object, what safeguards should be changed so that the next disputed survey is resolved before the gates, buildings or livelihoods are put at risk?
Those are questions that go beyond one commissioner, one estate or one court case.
They go to the credibility of the rule of law on the ground.
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