Around 2 on a Sunday morning, they streamed out of the building, running in every direction. Within seconds, the birthday party at a Lagos hotel turned into a stampede as people fled armed policemen who had burst into the compound.

“I couldn’t understand what was happening,” said Onyeka Oguaghamba, a trade union officer who was using a borrowed car as a taxi at weekends. “Was it armed robbers or a fire?”

Oguaghamba had been dozing in the car park of the Kelly Ann Hotel. After a long journey driving three customers to the hotel in the Egbeda suburb, he said, he had decided to sleep in the car rather than risk a perilous journey home on potholed roads where he could encounter armed robbers.

Assuming the dozens of people who raced past him were fleeing danger, Oguaghamba said, he got out of the car and ran. Before he could reach the hotel compound’s gates, however, he was pulled to the ground and struck repeatedly on his head. Seconds later, he said, he realised he was being held by a policeman using a gun as a bludgeon. Lagos state police spokesman Bala Elkana declined to comment on the beating claim on the grounds that the raid happened before his tenure began. He turned down emailed and text message requests to speak to police officers who participated in the raid.

The impact on Oguaghamba’s life was swift. After two weeks in police detention, he was fired as a bookkeeper with the Nigeria Union Of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, a job he had held for eight years. His employers had seen the videos on social media and didn’t believe his explanation, he said. His former manager declined to respond to a journalist’s text messages and phone calls.

The 42-year-old, who insists he is not gay, was unable to find work for a year after his arrest. Finally, in December, he was hired as a driver for a road transport company.

Even Oguaghamba’s four boys – aged 6, 7 and two 10-year-olds – weren’t immune from the innuendo that swirled around their father. While he was in police detention, Oguaghamba said, they were told their father had been on television.

“I felt so bad, although they didn’t understand what gay means,” he said. “They asked me ­why police arrested me and they were showing me on television. I explained to them that the police can arrest anybody at any time.”