JTF doubts exhumed corpse as John Togo’s, to conduct DNA test

By SAMUEL OYADONGHA

Yenagoa— The Joint Task Force on the Niger Delta, JTF, code-named Operation Restore Hope, may conduct a DNA test to ascertain whether the corpse recently exhumed by its men was that of renegade militant leader, John Togo.

The authorities of the Joint Task Force, it was learnt, are still skeptical about the claims of the death of the wanted militant leader and evidence of his death offered by the decomposing corpse purportedly belonging to him.

JTF had last week found the grave where the militant leader and commander of disbanded Niger Delta Liberation Force, NDLF, ‘Gen’ John Togo, was purportedly buried by his surviving fighters, May 14, on the fringe of a riverine community in Delta State and dug up the decomposing corpse.

Togo’s decomposing body was allegedly interred in a camouflage military uniform and taken away in an ambulance after it was exhumed between 2  p.m., and 2.20 p.m., to an unknown destination by soldiers.

The Joint Task Force through its Media Coordinator, Lt-Col. Timothy Antigha, confirmed that its men were involved in the digging up of the decomposed body of somebody claimed to be John Togo and had deposited the unknown corpse at the morgue of the Warri General Hospital.

JTF, he said, as a professional outfit, will not be drawn into the  deception being peddled that the wanted renegade militant leader was dead.