By Umar Yusuf
Fear,anxiety and complete sense of insecurity has enveloped Adamawa State, especially the state capital as armed bandits have completely taken over the entire state.

The ugly development has almost crippled economic and social activities as the reign of terror by the men of the underworld have continued unchecked for almost two weeks running.

The armed bandits, who operate on motor cycles, have robbed no fewer than fifteen business places in the last two weeks on daily basis of which more than ten persons including five policemen have been killed or injured.

*Adenlere Shinaba, Adamawa State Police Commissioner & Hafiz Ringim, IGP

The targets of the hoodlums are supermarkets, Pharmaceutical companies and other business places noted to be making good sales as the yuletide approaches.

The ugly development has forced operators of business places to close shops as early as 5pm daily, even as they operate under perpetual fear and anxiety.

Earlier in the week, two policemen on guard at a premise where luggages of returning pilgrims are kept were shot dead and their arms and ammunition were carted away by the gunmen.

The premise is just some few meters away from the main gate of the 75 Strike Force of the Nigeria Air force  in Yola, even as the fleeing gunmen trailed a man said to be a petroleum products merchant to Jambutu, shot him dead and his car taken away.

The same fleeing gunmen were said to have trailed another person who withdrew a huge amount of money from one of the new generation banks

to a certain spot in the same Jambutu Surburb where he was shot dead and the money was carted away.

Other business places robbed were Luka Memorial Supermarket where one of the directors of the shop along with two others were shot dead,while at Jenneries Pharmaceutical and Basmic Tile companies, four people were reportedly gunned down by the hoodlums at different operations.

Some business operators who spoke to Crime Alert under condition of anonymity lamented the state of insecurity that has completely enveloped the Adamawa State capital of recent.

The  operators called on the state Police Command to, as a matter of urgency, step up efforts at arresting the situation, noting that the most worrisome is the fact that the hoodlums operate on daily basis without any arrest despite the numerous roadblocks mounted by the Police in the State Capital and its environs.

When contacted, Adamawa State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Adenrele Shinaba stated that the command is making frantic efforts to arrest the ugly development.

The Commissioner, who spoke through the Command’s Public Relations

Officers, Altine Daniel (ASP) however solicited for the co-operation of members of the public with useful information to arrest the situation.

“The armed bandits are in the midst of us. So members of the public should be ready to give the police useful information as to the where about of these dare-devil robbers. The police will surely act swiftly and get them arrested”, Altine concluded.

Only recently, no fewer than   12 police men including a retired deputy superintendent of police, DSP, were arrested and detained and currently undergoing interrogation at the Adamawa state Police Command over alleged large scale theft  of arms and ammunition, from the police armory at the police headquarters.

The suspected policemen, including the retired armorer of the command, were believed to have been fingered by some robbers who were recently arrested by the command’s special anti-robbery squad, following a robbery incident at the Jimeta shopping complex, where they shot dead two persons including a pregnant woman, and carted away over N2million worth of GSM recharge cards.

Police sources disclosed that the robbers fingered the retired armorer, as their main source of arms, with which they used for their

robbery operations between Gombe, Taraba and Adamawa States. According to the source; about 6 other policemen were fingered by the robbers as their accomplices in the crime.

The source further disclosed that based on the information given by the arrested robbers, the state police Commissioner, Mr Adenrele Shinaba,directed an inventory of the armory at the command, which revealed that at-least, over 120  assorted guns, mostly AK47 rifles and shot- guns, and some quantity of ammunitions,  were missing from the inventory.

The robbers were said to have cracked under police interrogation when they revealed that  the retired armorer, who was arrested from his retirement home in Gombe state, was renting out the Guns, to them at the rate of N200,000 per operation.

The police source said one of the arrested policemen accomplice, a constable, was found to have owned  five cars including 2010 model of Toyota corolla.