Osayi, second son of Lawrence Anini, the notorious armed robber who was executed alongside his gang members in 1987, has spoken out after three decades of silence.
In a viral video, Osayi said he decided to speak because of people’s opinion about him for many years.
Osayi said anytime he goes out, people always pointed him out as ‘look at Anini’s son. That is Anini’s son.’
He said he was not hiding his identity and that he is proud of his father.
Osayi who wore black and carried dread locks, said he wanted to use the video to clarify some things about his late father.
He lampooned Nollywood producers over the video of ‘Anini’ saying many things in the video were untrue.
His words, “His name is not Nomayankpon as stated in the movie. Anini is not an alias but my grandfather’s name.
“If I am walking, people always pointed me out saying ‘see Anini pikin.’ I was somewhere yesterday and people were saying many things about Anini.
“I am not hiding my identity. I have used that name to take the Nigeria government to court for years. I am proud of my father. If the way he runs things is not okey by you, that is your opinion but he is my father.
“We are two brothers. The other one is called Osaro. There is no need for people to be pointing out at me. My grandmother is still alive. I will release the true story of Anini by this month end. There is nothing real in that drama about Anini.”
KINGSLEY Ike, 34, lived by the gun. And Raphael Nwogu, 76, lived to arm him. Like Siamese twins, the armed robber and gunmaker respectively, profited from their symbiotic relationship. Their story is the stuff of urban legend perhaps. Nwogu, a self-confessed Biafran war hero, a.k.a Shore Battery, operated a steel forge, where he manufactured craft weapons for Ike and several other clients. That was his night job. From morning till dusk, Shore Battery operated a small shop in Awka, Anambra State, where he sold spades, shov els, cutlasses and cooking utensils for domestic use by his customers. Through the night, however, the blacksmith retired to his forge, located several kilometres away from his stall and scene of his day job.
There, he crafted weaponry because it was very lucrative and he really loved to make guns. But like the proverbial bomb maker, who eventually gets mangled by his own craft, Shore Battery’s brilliance and ingenuity was eclipsed in the brute glow of his gun art. Soon after receiving a cache of deadly weapons from Shore Battery, Ike embarked on an operation during the Yuletide. Unfortunately for him, he ran into a crack team of anti robbery police officers, who killed him in a gun battle. Just one member of Ike’s squad allegedly survived the encounter. News got to Shore Battery and he shut operations to avoid any trail that would lead back to him. Months after Ike’s death, however, Shore Battery reopened his forge. With the elections approaching, he hoped to make a lot of money crafting guns for politicians, kidnappers, armed robbers and gun runners. To his chagrin, Ike’s colleagues stormed his hideout, accusing him of making a faulty weapon for the deceased.
These sub-machine gun prototypes were crafted by a local gunsmith
They said Ike’s gun got ‘hooked’ in the heat of his gun battle with the police thus rendering him a cheap casualty to the law enforcers. Shore Battery protested his innocence, claiming his weapons could never “hook” because they were high grade, but his assailants were unconvinced. They told him to explain to Ike “in yonder” and shot him in the head, with a gun produced in his forge. There is no gainsaying Ike, the armed robber, and Shore Battery, the gun-maker, suffered the brute end of their art. While they present a cautionary tale, their story resonates the gravity of Nigeria’s Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) conundrum. Small arms proliferation destabilises Nigeria and has increased the intensity and human impact of conflicts in the region, according to regional arms experts. Disturbed by the malady, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) recently issued a oneweek ultimatum to illegal firearm holders to surrender their weapons. The police said it had perfected plans to embark on a massive nationwide joint arms mop up operation. The measure becomes imperative as the police plots to rid the streets of illicit weaponry and forestall armed violence in the forthcoming general election. The Inspector General of Police (IG), Mohammed Adamu, called on Nigerians currently in unlawful possession of such weapons to voluntarily return them to police stations or any public armoury nearest to them.
“The IGP has also, with immediate effect, placed an embargo on the issuance of new licences for designated arms throughout the country,” said Force spokesman and Assistant Commissioner of Police, Frank Mba. Mba, said the measure was consequent “upon intelligence indicating the presence of huge quantity of arms in unlawful possession of some Nigerians, the desperation of some citizens to acquire more arms, and the continued proliferation of illicit weapons in the polity, with the attendant negative and security implications.” Few months earlier, the Force Headquarters’ Joint Task Team, led by the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Joshak Habilla, recovered 2,753 illegal firearms from 13 states.
Early 2018, Nigerian troops launched ‘Operation Deep Punch II’ in Borno State, taking the fight against the Boko Haram insurgent group deep into the Sambisa Forest; this led to the killing of 33 Boko Haram insurgents and the recovery of an important weapons cache, including 15 craft-produced weapons.
The crime fighter: A muzzleloading rifle forged from scrap metal by vigilante gunsmith, Eshayo Eno, in a village south of Adamawa State. Enos craft weapons are deployed in fighting crime.
That was, however, one of an ongoing series of seizures by the armed forces fighting terrorism in the northeast and crime on Nigeria’s streets. Recently, the police nabbed Benjamin Obi, a 72-year-old gun manufacturer and his three sons, Tochukwu, Chuks and Chetachi in Anambra State. Parading them in their Awka headquarters recently, the then state Commissioner of Police, Garba Baba Umar, said the police acted on a tip-off from one of the armed robbery suspects arrested recently. The suspect and his sons were reportedly arrested with a large number of guns and gun-forging machines in their home in Uli, Ihiala Local Government Area of the state. The 72-year-old suspect, Obi, however, denied the allegations stating that he was a blacksmith. He said that he belonged to the Anambra Hunters Association in Umuoma village, Uli, and that the guns discovered in his house belonged to fellow hunters for whom he repaired guns. Gun trafficking and illicit circulation of small arms and light weapons (SALW) are often discussed in the context of fuelling instability and insecurity in the country, but rarely, is the issue of locally manufactured weapons given appropriate attention in the discourse, noted William Assanvo, ENACT Regional Observatory Coordinator for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS)West Africa. Tailor-made, deadly “In Awka, every blacksmith is a potential manufacturer of small arms,” argued Nonso Ekenta.
The security analyst and entrepreneur noted that the predominance of Awka in the production of craft weapons is evident in the common reference to craft weapons as ‘Awka-made’ or more simply ‘Awka.’ The weapons, produced clandestinely, are sold to their trusted allies or patrons in a form of network, and this clandestine aspect of the trade has so far contributed to the survival of the industry despite its illegality. The indigenous production of small arms has consequently become an underground activity, which is more profitable for the manufacturers and dealers, he explained. Although there are a number of wellknown craft production markets in Nigeria, including Katsina, Kaduna, Niger and Calabar, Awka has been a centre for craft production since the Nigerian-Biafran civil war in the late 1960s, when the town produced explosives.
Over time, the expertise for local production has remained a family business, with knowledge of fabrication techniques passed down through generations. True, The Nation findings revealed that the manufacturing network is a very closed circuit and shrouded in secrecy. The weapons manufactured are relatively cheap and the existing market for firearms is a motivation for local producers to manufacture guns for a wide range of customers who would use them for hunting, traditional ceremonies, sport shooting, self-defence and, more lucratively, robbery and assassination. Production techniques, however, remain rudimentary. No machines are used in the production process. Vices, steel saws, manual drills and files are employed in the fabrication process, with small make-shift furnaces used to heat the metals. The fabrication of craft weapons usually takes place in producers‘ homes or backyards.
The materials used in the process are sourced locally and the weapons are often duplicates of existing firearms. They include pistols, shotguns (including single-barrel and double-barrel), automatic rifles and ammunition. While some of the components are often brought in from foreign sources for assembly in the country, some are sourced from scraps of faulty and condemned weapons. Boniface Enelamah, a blacksmith, and craft gun producer, “produces guns to support vigilante groups in his village and neighbouring towns in their fight against cultism, kidnapping and armed robbery.” The widower and father of four, however, said that he is reluctant to pass on the knowledge to his children because he is worried that they might be influenced to deploy the skills in service of crimi nals. Enelamah, however, maintained that none of his craft weaponry ever gets into the hands of “bad people.” Unlike some shameless people, “I don’t make weapons for bad people,” he said. Describing the production techniques employed, a local blacksmith/gunsmith explained that the process begins by cutting a number of ‘frame forms’ out of sheet metal and welding them together. The slide is subsequently, crafted out of iron (like that found in old beds) and a nail is filed into shape to serve as a firing pin. Wire mesh from truck tires produces recoil and magazine springs.
The barrel is a piece of pipe that is widened by drilling to accommodate the chamber. Production takes less than one working day. Another gunsmith, however, revealed that he sources original Beretta magazines—because these are difficult to reproduce— and builds the rest of the weapon around them. He described the process of hardening a piece of pipe with gas to make it strong enough to serve as a barrel. Craft weapons are cheaper to acquire than industrially produced weapons. The prices of high end weapons in the black market vary; an AK-47-type assault rifle costs N300,000– N400,000 while a selfloading pistol sells between N150, 000 and N250,000. Hand made weapons, in contrast, cost an estimated NGN 20,000 for a single-barrel shotgun and N10,000 for a ‘Dane gun.’ While ammunition is generally thought to be readily available in Nigeria, prices per round fluctuate from N150 to N500 for a shotgun shell and from N250 to N500 for a 9 mm or 7.62 mm round. Further investigations revealed that the average price for a shotgun shell is approximately N400, while 9 × 19 mm and different types of 7.62 mm rounds average around N500. Craft weaponry may, however, be acquired at ridiculously lower prices, depending on the magnitude of sale and the stature of the gun maker.
Recent discoveries by the police attest to this fact. For instance, in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, the police command recently discovered an illegal firearm fabricating factory in Shenagu village near Zuba. Three suspects, Philip John, whom the police described as the owner of the factory; Onyegabueze Okpara, supplier of ammunition and Joseph Bulus, distributor of the arms, were arrested in the raid, according to Sadiq Bello, FCT Commissioner of Police. Items recovered from the suspects include a locally fabricated revolver pistol cylinder, four dane guns, one double barrel gun, one single barrel gun, two calibre live cartridge and six dane gun muzzles. Others are four single barrel muzzles, six-barrel gun frame, two gun muzzle springs, one manual motor drill, one dice for retread and various implements used for manufacturing locally made weapons. During interrogation, John reportedly confessed to have been in the illicit business for 17 years and selling the singlebarrel guns and dane gun for N20,000 and N10,000 respectively.
Okpara, “who disguises as a bicycle spare parts dealer,” was arrested at Kaita market with the items which he allegedly concealed and sold to criminals, had been in the illicit business since 1997. He sells a pack containing 25 pieces of live cartridge for N12,000, while single cartridge goes for N500. Bulus, who was said to be the major link who connects the principal suspect — John — with potential buyers of the fabricated firearms, was arrested in Zuba. Living under the gun Of the 650 million guns currently in circulation world-wide, the number of small arms in West Africa is estimated at eight million, with a minimum of 77,000 in the hands of West African insurgent groups. But while Guinea Bissau, one of the poorest countries in the world, is estimated to have 25,000 weapons in circulation, Nigeria is believed to have about 1.6 million illicit small arms in circulation among its civilian population courtesy an illicit gun market valued between $1.7 billion to $3.5 billion.
Simply put, there is one gun for every 10 people on the planet. With 16 billion units of deadly ammunition produced every year, there are small arms and ammunition enough to shoot every man, woman and child on the planet twice. The usual victims In 2018, gun violence claimed no fewer than 7, 000 casualties through the Boko Haram insurgency, herdsmen and farmers’ clashes, cult clashes, sectarian and communal clashes, kidnapping, armed robbery, among others. The figure is, however, conservative as many of the killings were supposedly unreported. The sad reality of children and teenagers taking to arms as occasioned by widespread recruitment and arrests of teen cultists, armed robbers and terrorists further accentuate the magnitude of the crisis. Boko Haram, for instance, expanded its operational tactics to include the forcible recruitment of under-age boys as combatants. The minors, oftentimes, harden into stone-cold killers on the watch of the group’s leadership. One such victim is Yau Damina, 14. The teenager was abducted by Boko Haram and spent five months in its ter ror camps, training to become a combatant soldier. And he became a stone-cold killer.
In five months, Damina developed deadly skills. Speaking to The Nation, he revealed that he killed five men in the blink of an eye, because they disrespected and killed his team leader. Unlike Damina whose body count tally at five, Ali Mustapha, 17, killed 13 people during his time with Boko Haram. Mustapha revealed that he was forced to kill his victims in Chikungudu Forest, Kalabalge, where he was held in captivity for three years by the insurgents. Both Damina and Mustapha were trained to handle craft guns and the highly lethal AK-47. Children can easily take to small arms, apparently. Consequently, small arms have helped create more than 300,000 child soldiers and marauders. Children also constitute primary victims as increased availability of small arms through illicit channels has contributed to an alarming rise in child casualties in local conflicts. Till date, over four million children have been killed; eight million have been disabled and 15 million left homeless, according to the United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF).
Stemming the tide To check the situation, Chinonso Ibiama, a retired police officer and security consultant, recommended that the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) resumes its responsibility for professional demolition of all SALW seized by the security agencies. The government should also establish technical support programmes for a professional conversion of local blacksmiths in order to reduce the production lines, he said, stressing that guns produced in such programmes should be required to bear the manufacturer‘s signature. Ibiama’s suggestion brings to mind the 1959 Firearms Act (paragraph 13), which provides that it is illegal to sell or transfer any firearm unless it is permanently marked, or stamped, with the maker‘s name and number, or other prescribed identifier, unless this information is specified on the purchaser‘s licence or permit. Currently, craft weapons are not marked with individual identifiers. Until several years ago, craft producers had marked their weapons with their own number or symbol. However, these identifying marks were used by police to trace weapons used in crimes.
•Suspected cultists arrested with craft weapons in the wake of a turf war
This led to the prosecution of craft producers whose weapons had been implicated in criminal activities, and consequently a halt to the practice of engraving signatures or marks on the weapons. Thus, while industrial weapons are becoming harder to acquire in Nigeria due to restrictions on international arms trade and trafficking, locally-crafted firearms are filling the void. There is a catch, however, to the use of craft weaponry, of which the cheapest produce could be a single shot pistol firing a .410 (10.4mm) or 20 gauge (15.6mm) shotgun shell. This is for a young thug, or an armed robber just starting out. On the down side, craft guns are dangerous to use, often lacking a safety switch, and prone to exploding, rather than firing, when the trigger is pulled. Crude copies of modern firearms can also be dangerous since they are not built with modern quality-control facilities. They simply have to look real and be capable of firing a few rounds behind the gunsmiths’ shop.
But once the sale is closed, the user is left to his own devices. Consider the sad case of Shore Battery and his ill-fated client, Ike, for instance; Ike went on armed operation thinking he was empowered by his choice weapon, a sawed-off double barrel shot gun, crafted by his supposedly able gunsmith. Then his gun failed to load in the heat of a gun war with policemen in neighbouring Abia. His end, of course, is better imagined. For Shore Battery, on the other hand, crafting guns were both his first love and a survival issue, since he barely made a living through honest production of clothes hangers, buckets, hoes and pans. In his lifetime, the late blacksmith, reportedly loved to say: “Uzu amaghi akpu egbe le egbe anya n’odudu…A blacksmith who does not know how to mould a gun should look at the tail (rear feather) of a kite.” Although Shore Battery met his waterloo in the hands of disgruntled clients, the lasting tradition of gun-making enjoys fresh vigour, albeit surreptitiously, in the backyards of illicit gun makers like Obi and Enelama. In their groove, it takes as little as three hours to craft one gun, a flintlock pistol to be precise. It is crude, thick, frighteningly lethal and, even teenagers could afford it.
Troops of the 2 Brigade Nigerian Army on Monday foiled an armed robbery operation at Otoro village in Etim Ekpo local government area of Akwa Ibom state.
A statement obtained from the Assistant Director Public Relations of 2 Brigade, Nigerian Army, Major Umar Shuaibu, said the soldiers shot dead one of the armed robbers during the combat with the hoodlums.
According to Major Shuaib, the army troops swung into action following a distress call from policemen on road block duty along Nkek-Ukanafun-Abak road that they were under attack by armed robbers.
“The troops swiftly moved and repelled the attack. It was on their way back to the base that they encountered armed bandits and successfully shot one of them after exchange of fire.
“A locally fabricated pistol and one expended cartridge were recovered and all the properties of the robbery victims were returned to them”, the statement said.
A 60-year old woman who gave her name as Helen Odiazor has cried out for justice over the killing of her son, Melody, the same night her husband died.
Already, State Commissioner of Police, Babatunde Kokumo, has waded into the matter by inviting the Divisional Police Officer of Saint Saviour Police Station and the vigilante group that killed Melody.
Late Melody, a tipper driver apprentice, was said to have been shot by some local vigilante at Tipper Garage along Saint Saviour road at about 9pm when he was returning home after being informed about his father’s death.
He was said to have been shot alongside two other boys and their bodies were displayed at the St Saviour Police Station.
His mother, Helen, who was in tears said it was painful for her to lose her husband and her son the same day.
Helen said her husband died in a hospital on November 8th while she was informed about her son’s death at about 4am the following day.
She stated that her son was on his way home on hearing the death of his father when he was shot by Vigilante Men in St Saviour.
The widow insisted that her son was not an armed robber.
Sister of the deceased, Rachel, said policemen told the family that their brother was not dead but being treated for gunshot injuries.
She said the police refused to disclose the hospital or take the family to the hospital.
“They said they were three of them that were shot that night. Police said one died instantly, my brother was seriously injured while one is in custody.”
However, CP Kokumo said he has invited all parties to a meeting this evening for proper briefing.
He said the impression given to the police was that vigilante group had an encounter with armed robbers but that another information has emerged about the killing.
The arrested notorious kidnapper, armed robber and murderer, Justice Oti, aka High Tension, has revealed that a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Martins Mana, who represents Ahoada East constituency one, is a member of his gang.
Oti, an indigene of Odisama in Ahoada East Local Government Area of Rivers state, who was born on March 7, 1993, admitted being a member of Icelander cult group and he had killed no fewer than fifteen members of a rival Greenlander cult group in the area.
The notorious kidnapper (Oti) exclusively told our reporter yesterday in Port Harcourt that his decision to kill people was because members of Greenlander cult group also killed over 15 Icelander cult group members.
Oti, who embraced the amnesty offer of the Nyesom Wike’s administration, revealed that he did not completely surrender his arms and ammunition, stating that the Greenlander members never submitted their guns, but only deceived members of the amnesty committee by surrendering sticks.
The kidnapper, who was arrested in Bauchi State, pointed out that the persons he killed were as a result of revenge of previous killings by the rival cult gang, but he was silent on the roles played by the Rivers lawmaker in the gang.
Oti disclosed that when his deputy in the gang, Lucky, aka Iron, was killed by the rival cult group and his head was cut and taken away, with the Greenlander members threatening to also kill him, he decided to escape to Bauchi, after hiding his AK-47 rifle and ammunition in his village.
Armed Robber
Rivers police command decided to formally write to the Speaker of the state’s House of Assembly, Ikuinyi-Owaji Ibani, of Andoni constituency, to release Mana, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for interview by the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (F-SARS), headed by Mr, Akin Fakorede.
The police letter that was obtained through a source close to the Rivers Commissioner of Police, Zaki Ahmed, was dated October 9, 2017, with the command indicating that it was investigating cases of kidnapping and murder in Ahoada East LGA of the state involving Oti and members of his gang.
The police’s letter also indicated that inviting the lawmaker was to facilitate the command’s investigation, with the speaker asked to release Mana for an interview with the commander of F-SARS on October 12 this year at 12 noon.
The Rivers lawmaker was contacted by our reporter for his reaction through his mobile line from 6:44 p.m., but the line kept ringing out, while a text message that was later sent to the same line had not been replied as at press time.
The Rivers police commissioner had earlier declared that his command had zero tolerance for crimes and criminality.
Also paraded yesterday by the police was Blessed Francis, a 20-year-old, 200 Level Geology student of the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), who was arrested in Port Harcourt for burglary and armed robbery, barely three months after another UNIPORT undergraduate, Ifeanyi Dike, was arrested for ritual killing and he is still standing trial..
A gang of three gun-running youths, comprising two ND-2 students of the Rivers state government-owned Port Harcourt Polytechnic: Frank Nwaaknma, 22, from Ibaa, Emohua LGA of Rivers state and Ujie Francis, from Obudu in Cross Rivers state, were also arrested.
The third member of the three-member gang, Chigozie Junior Koro, 32, from Ogbakiri in Emohua LGA of Rivers, stated that he and Nwaaknma only wanted to assist Francis (Ujie) to sell for N100,000, a pistol he claimed to have picked during communal clash in his Cross River village, with promise of giving them N10,000, before they were apprehended by the police.
The 27-year-old Daniel Okpougo, an indigene of Edoha in Ahoada East LGA, who was arrested with ammunition, disclosed that High Tension (Oti) killed his uncle and he decided to travel to Patani in Delta state to buy the bullets to avenge the death before he was arrested on the East-West Road.
Others arrested for various criminal activities included Loveday Opi, an indigene of Egbema in Ogba/Egbeme/Ndoni LGA and Sunday Didia, who hails from Egbeda in Emohua LGA, both of Rivers state, as well as Kingsley Ofomata from Imo state, John Elvis, an indigene of Auchi in Edo state and Chimankpa Ukomwa, from Orlu in Imo state.
An excited Mr. Syriacus Amuchie, who was working offshore with an unnamed company, but lost his Toyota forerunner Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) to a gang of four armed robbers, while the vehicle was later recovered, admonished members of the public to continue to support the police, especially the F-SARS.
Amuchie revealed that the SUV was snatched at gunpoint around 7:55 p.m. on July 6 this year, at the gate of his house in Rumuigbo, Port Harcourt, while waiting for the gate to be opened, with the car later recovered in Ada-George area of Port Harcourt, declaring that F-SARS operatives should be commended, not vilified.
The Bayelsa Police Command has arrested a youth suspected to be armed robber in Azikoro, Yenagoa Local Government Area.
In a statement issued to reporters yesterday in Yenagoa, the command’s spokesman, DSP Asinim Butswat, said a local pistol was also recovered for the suspect.
“On July 21, the policemen responded to a distress call by a staff of Community Secondary School, Azikoro, Yenagoa, that some boys were gathered around the school premises in a suspicious manner.
“Subsequently, plain cloth policemen were dispatched to the scene and arrested a youth, wielding a local pistol,’’ he said.
Butswat said the suspect has volunteered useful information to stimulate police investigations while efforts had been intensified to arrest his cohorts.
He warned the youth against criminality, stating that the command would not allow any persons arrested to go unpunished.
But for the intervention of the police, two suspects apprehended yesterday by people at Jakande Estate, Isolo and Mafowoku in Alapere, Ketu, would have been lynched.
The suspects were stripped of their garments and beaten to a pulp before policemen whisked them away.
While the man caught at Jakande Estate was accused of being a hired assassin, sent to kill a business woman, the one apprehended at Alapere, the residents claimed was an armed robber, who together with his gang members, invaded the area around 1:30am.
It was gathered that the suspected assailant confessed he was sent by his victim’s friend to kill her at all cost, adding that he came to Lagos from Sapele, Delta State, to carry out the mission.
He was said to have entered the woman’s boutique as a shopper and made the woman take him round, after he claimed he wanted to surprise his lover with a gift.
The suspect, witnesses said, brought out a rope and tried to strangle the woman when they got to the cloth stacks. He was said to have also attempted to stop her from screaming by cutting her windpipe with the rope.
Fortunately, the victim, while struggling, it was gathered, gained a little ground and raised an alarm, which attracted her neighbours and passersby.
The crowd that stormed the victim’s shop, it was gathered, caught the suspected assailant who was still trying to strangle the woman.
While the woman was rushed to hospital, the mob descended on the suspect, interrogating and beating him at the same time.
It was gathered that they assembled tyres and petrol to set him ablaze before policemen rushed to the scene, dispersed the crowd and whisked him away.
At Alapere, the police were said to have forced landlords in Mafowoku to take the suspect to the hospital for treatment of the injuries he sustained during the mob. The police also directed the landlords to feed, clothe the suspect and ensured nothing happened to him.
It was gathered that the suspect, whose identity could not be ascertained, went to Memudu Street at the wee hours of yesterday with three others to steal.
However, they could not enter the compound they targeted because its occupants were alert and noticed the bandits.
To escape being caught, the robbers, according to Moshood Abiodun, scaled a perimeter fence from Memudu and attempted to run through Mafowoku.
Although they successfully made it through, the suspect tarried and snatched a mobile phone from a resident, who screamed for help and vigilante operatives caught him.
Abiodun said: “He was beaten up, wounded and stripped naked. I was not around because I went to work but I heard about it. As they were beating him, someone called the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) and he sent his men to the scene.
“The thief was taken to the station and the DPO said the landlords must take care of the thief. They bought drugs and food for him. The DPO promised to charge him to court tomorrow.”
Contacted, the command’s spokesman, Olarinde Famous-Cole, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) said he was unaware of the incidents and promised to revert back.
The Abia State Police Command, Umuahia Headquarters, has announced that operatives from the Anti-Kidnapping Section of State Criminal Investigation Department (D7), Umuahia, have smashed a kidnapping/armed robbery gang that has been terrorizing Abia and its neighbouring states.
According to a release by its Public Relations Officer, Geoffrey Ogbonna, which was made available to The Nation, the gang was smashed at Ukpakiri in Obingwa Local Government Area of the state off Aba-Ikot Ekpene Expressway.
Ogbonna also disclosed that following a tip off, a member of the gang, identified as Samuel Kalu (aka Obere), an indigene of Okai Item in Bende Local Government Area of the state, was arrested.
Before the arrest of Kalu, the notorious armed robber was said to have engaged the police team in a gun duel which led to the injuring of some of the police personnel and destruction of the operational vehicle that was used for the operation.
Sources around Item told our reporter that Kalu was shot on the leg while he was trying to escape from the scene and could not go far with the injury before he was eventually captured by the police.
The police spokesman who further disclosed that Kalu on interrogation confessed killing two policemen at the Orji Uzor Kalu’s Bridge in Aba in April, killing of a US-based Army Officer (one Chuks Mbaeri Okebata) at Mbieri, Imo State, in December last year and also that he participated in the killing of about eight members of the Abia State Vigilante Service (AVGS) at MCC junction along Aba-Owerri Expressway, Aba.
The Command spokesman said that it has deployed members of the Tactical Response Squad (TRS) to assist in tracking down other members of the gang and therefore enjoined members of the public with useful information on the whereabouts of the hoodlums to avail such to the police.
An operative of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) attached to the Bayelsa State command and an armed robber were, Wednesday, killed in a gun battle.
It was gathered that a gang of armed robbers operating in Ogbia Local Government Area laid an ambush for a patrol van of the operatives along Kolo Creek area of the council.
The armed robbers reportedly hid in the ambush after first attacking a police checkpoint along the road and disarming policemen on duty at about 12:24am.
A security source who spoke in confidence said the armed robbers caught the policemen off guard and compelled them to surrender their weapons.
He said the robbers carted away about three Ak47 riffles and several rounds of ammunition.
He said: “When they escaped from the scene, they sighted a security patrol van man by operatives of the NSCDC and hid in the bush. When the van approached, they opened fire on it killing one of the civil defenders”.
But he said the operatives fired back and gunned down one of the armed robbers while others later escaped.
It was gathered that the remains of one the slain armed robber with his pump action rifle were recovered by the personnel and brought to NSCDC headquarters in Yenagoa.
They reportedly handed over to the stage Commandant of NSCDC, Mr. Desmond Agu.
When contacted, Agu confirmed that armed robbers laid ambush for a patrol van of the corps and killed one of the operatives.
He, however, praised his men for fighting back and overpowering them with their superior gunfire resulting in the killing of one of the robbers.
Agu, however, said he was not aware of the attack on a police checkpoint adding that he had handed over the riffle and the corpse of hoodlum to the state’s police command.
