By Kayode Fasua
The Ogun State Police Command yesterday paraded nine criminal suspects, among them a seven-man armed robbery gang operating in military uniform along the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway.
The suspects, Ikechukwu Alore, Ifeanyi Emmanuel, Chibueze Kingsley, Obiora Michael, Elias John and Vincent Magnus, were fished out from their different hideouts within and outside Ogun State by operatives of the Special Anti – Robbery Squads (SARS).
They were rounded up following a confessional statement extracted from one of the members of the gang who later died from gunshot injuries.
Also paraded along with the suspected robbers were two armed herdsmen, who abducted and gang-raped a 16-year-old daughter of a farm settler at Afowowa farm settlement in Ewekoro Local Government Area of the state.
Parading the suspects at the Command headquarters in Eleweran, Abeokuta, the state Commissioner of Police, Edward Ajogun, said the arrest of the suspects formed part of the determination of the command not to give criminals any breathing space in the state.
Ajogun said the suspected leader of the seven-man robbery syndicate, Obiora Michael, was traced to his residence in Ajangbadi area of Lagos State on September 17, 2020, where his wife was treating him of the bullet wounds he sustained during a gun duel with the SARS operatives.
“He had lied to his wife that he sustained the injuries in a road accident,” he said.
Commenting on the two armed herdsmen, the CP, who gave their names as 20-year-old Abubakar Adamu and Muhammadu Aliyu, further explained that three armed herders, while herding their cattle, attacked the family of a farm settler, Aminat Okeshola, where they dispossessed her of the sum of N140, 000, and thereafter abducted her 16 years old daughter to a cassava plantation where they gang-raped the girl.
Luck, however, ran out of the herders when a police team from Ewekoro division, which was responding to a distress call, caught up with them and arrested them.
Meanwhile, items recovered from the robbery gang included three sets of military camouflage, a military vest, a nose mask in army camouflage, a military head-warmer and camouflage bag as well as an imitation gun, wrapped in cello tapes.
Other items recovered from the armed herdsmen included one Jack knife and two long sticks.
