Category: Crime Diary

It was tears galore last Thursday in Araromi Ajegunle community in Makun area of Sagamu Local Government, Ogun State, after some persons suspected to be government officials carried out demolition of buildings in the community.

The distraught landlords lamented the demolitions which they explained caught them unawares.
The state government however said it had no hand in the demolition.

The demolition which started at about 7 a.m with stern-looking mobile policemen protecting the officials.
The affected landlords explained that their belongings were not spared during the demolitions, which also affected shops.
The Nation learnt that an unidentified woman who had been laid up with stroke for some years was forcibly ejected from her house before the building was brought down by the bulldozers.

According to one of the residents, Mr. Micheal Ariyo, those behind the demolition ‘’suddenly came to our community with mobile policemen and ordered us out of our houses. They shot sporadically in to the air to intimidate us.

They did not allow us to remove our belongings at all. Residents who were not at home had their houses demolished in their absence.
Ariyo explained that residents had filed a suit pending before a state High Court in Sagamu against previous attempts by the state government to carry out the exercise.
A 74-year-old landlord, Samuel Ogunyombo,

and her children battled tears while narrating the agony which the demolition of his house has caused.
He said he has lost all he laboured to achieve in life saying ‘’ Where do I go from here. Where do I start from since my entire belongings have been lost to the demolition?

Another resident, Olatunde Olawale, who moved to the community about three months ago after completing his house blamed the demolition on the state government.
A cross-section of the respondents claimed they spotted two officials of the Bureau of Land among those who carried out the demolition.

They urged the state government in the interest of justice and fairness to come to their aid.
Contacted, the spokesman of Bureau of Land, Mr Michael Passover Adesina said the agency was not responsible for the alleged demolition.

He explained that the agency had only been carrying out awareness programme in communities to sensitise residents on the need to encroach on government land.

He urged the distraught property owners to further their investigation on those behind the demolition, adding that the agency already has a number of cases involving land grabbers who are being aided by policemen to demolish buildings illegally.

‘’Officials of our agency are not involved in the demolition exercise and it has not even come to our attention that some persons pulled down buildings in that axis of the state. We have not carried out a single demolition within the last three years; we have only be sensitising people to avoid erecting structures on public land.’’

A source in the Ministry of Urban and Physical Planning, the ministry had no hand in the controversial demolition exercise.

In the early hours of Sunday, unknown gunmen attacked the home of the Principal Assistant to the Benue State Governor on Knowledge Economy and Investment, Dr. Tavershiama Adyorough, sniffing life out of him.
The late Adyorough was widely reputed as a brilliant economist, who was the engine room of the economic policies of Governor Samuel Ortom’s administration in the state. That much was attested to by one of Adyorough’s closest colleagues, Daniel Gbabo, who described the deceased as a sound economist, who contributed immensely to the economic base of Benue State under Governor Ortom’s administration.

Apart from sharing the same office with the late Adyorough, Gbabo was also well known as his close confidant, sharing the same sentiments with the late aide of the governor, particularly in the area of boosting the economic base of the state through agriculture.
The Nation investigation revealed that the late Adyorough had spent most of his life working in the United States of America before Governor Ortom brought him back to Nigeria during his time as Minister of State for Trade and Investment.

And when Ortom became the governor of Benue State, he had no hesitation bringing him to Government House Makurdi to help improve the economy of the state regarded as the food basket of the nation.
Gbabo, who apart from being on the economic team of Governor Ortom with the late Adyorough is also the Special Assistant to the Governor on Administration and ICT, told The Nation that he was with the late Adyrough the Saturday night preceding his murder in the early hours of Sunday.
“We had held a review meeting as we are all on the staff verification committee constituted to fish out ghost workers,” Gbabo recalled.

He said that after the meeting, Adyorough drove himself because his driver was not around, while he (Gbabo) drove behind him as they headed to Adyorough’s residence on BIPC Estate.
Gbabo said at the BIPC home of the late governor’s aide, he spent quality time with him and his family until about 8 pm when his wife called him (Gbabo) that he had arrived from Otukpo.

He said: “I wanted to stay longer with him but my wife was back in town. So I excused myself to go home. Adyorough told me to stay as his wife was preparing pocho (a local delicacy), but I insisted on taking my leave. He personally opened the gate for me and I drove off.”
The Special Assistant to the Governor on Administration and ICT, who repeatedly fought back tears during the interview, described the late Adyorough as someone with sound knowledge of the economy and was passionate about Benue gaining zero oil economy in the nearest future.

Gbabo said: “He believed passionately that Governor Ortom would overcome the paucity of funds responsible for non-payment of salaries through massive investment in agriculture.
“He was also determined to help Governor Ortom succeed as he never looked at the challenges but the solutions and possibilities, just as he was not the materialistic type but one who lived a modest life.”
Gbabo said he was shocked to the marrow when he was informed the following morning that the man that opened the gate for him the previous night had been killed by some gunmen. The Nation gathered that the gunmen shot him through the back of his neck, his heart and his stomach, ripping his intestines open. They also shot his wife twice in the hand and hurriedly left them in the pool of their blood.

While Dr. Adyorough was killed on the spot, his wife managed to survive and has since been receiving treatment at the Benue State University Teaching Hospital in Makurdi.
The motive behind Adyorough’s killing remains yet a mystery. It suffices to say that it is the second time in two years an important aide of the governor would be brutally murdered. The first to be killed in a brutal manner was Denen Igbana, the governor’s former Special Assistant to the governor on Special Security.

There were, however, feelers that the late Adyorough might have stepped on the toes of a cabal involved in salary rackets in the state. It is believed that efforts made to lure him to their side had failed as he was determined to expose them.
These, however, are matters of conjecture, even though the state government has acknowledged a huge wage bill of N8.7 billion, which Governor Ortom said was unacceptable and vowed to flush out ghost workers from the state’s civil service.
The Benue State Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, said police are on the trail of the suspects. Governor Samuel Ortom has also vowed to track down the killers of his aide, while Gbabo said the blood of the deceased would fight until his killers are fished out, no matter how long it takes.

The question is how long it will take the poorly equipped security agencies to fish out the killers. This is the question begging for answer, considering that the search for wanted criminal gang leader, Terwase Akwaza a.k.a. Gana, who was declared wanted over Igbana’s death, has continued for almost one year without a clue.

A computer typist, Moji Lawal, has allegedly slashed the hands of her 14-year-old son, Lateef, with a razor blade for returning home late from church.
Lateef, who resides with his parents at 59 Market Street, Shomolu, is JSS 2 student of Morocco Junior High School, Shomolu, Lagos State.
According to neighbours, the boy was subjected to torture during which his mother used to a razor blade to inflict deep cuts on his hands on Monday August 21.
It was learnt that the boy was rushed to Shomolu General Hospital for treatment.
Sources said Lateef and his two sisters Adiat, 5, and Halimat, 2, lack parental care as they are neglected by their parents.
A neighbour who did not want her name in print said: ‘’The woman (Lateef’s mother) is a computer typist at Yaba College of Technology. She inflicted deep cuts into the hands of Lateef for coming late from church.
‘’As a result of this, the injuries sustained by Lateef was treated at Shomolu General hospital with the help of the hospital’s Social Welfare Unit which assisted in getting admission cards, free drugs and injections to prevent infections.
It was also learnt that the matter was reported to Alade Police Division in Shomolu.
Contacted, the spokesman of Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Olarinde Famous-Cole promised to revert to our correspondent. He was however unable to do so at press time.
However, a senior police officer at the station who asked not to be named confirmed the incident adding that the parents would be dealt with to serve as a deterrent to others.

The Comptroller General of Customs Compliance team has intercepted eight containers of scrap metals worth N100 million at the Apapa Port, Lagos.
The seizure followed the alarm raised by the federal government on the menace posed by the exportation of scrap metals by unscrupulous persons.
The CGC’s squad also intercepted a container of prohibited unprocessed thick wood. The two products are often exported to Italy and China for processing after which they are brought back to the country as finished products.
Scrap metals and thick wood have been under export prohibition for years.
Scrap metals when processed abroad find their ways back to the country as vehicle doors and fenders used by automobile manufacturers at a very high cost.
The special team was said to have been trailing those behind the export until a unit led by one Chief Superintendent Bello smashed the gang while heading to the Lagos Port for onward loading into a waiting vessel.
The nine containerized scraps, and thick wood in conjunction with their means of conveyance are now warehoused at the Federal Operations Unit in Lagos.
The scrap metals were being ferried from Sagamu through Ikorodu, with the drivers of the trailers unaware that they were being monitored by operatives of the compliance team, while those behind the unprocessed thick wood were coming from Ogere in Ogun State.
Sources revealed that there are some Chinese firms who procure the product from farmers in Ijebu Ode axis for onward movement to the Apapa Port for export.
The thick wood when processed find their way to Nigeria as finished state-of-the-art doors, and sold at exorbitant price.
It was learnt that there is no Insurance freight on such exports, and the felling of such trees for logs has aggravated the menace of deforestation in the country.
The Minister of Mines and Steel, Dr. Kayode Fayemi on July 12 this year alerted the Comptroller-General of Customs, to the illegal exportation of scrap metals. According to him, the federal government has taken several steps to encourage the processing of metals “and currently, we have over 20 companies operating in the sector converting scrap metals into iron rods for construction industry giving many jobs to Nigerians and providing necessary skills’.
In 2004, several officers including a Deputy Comptroller of Customs were sacked at the Tin Can Island Command’s Port Enforcement Unit for aiding and abetting in the illegal exportation of thick wood. They had connived with the wood exporter who was paying money into their bank account to facilitate the fraudulent business.