….Parades 41 suspects for various crimes

By Shina Abubakar

OSOGBO—THE Osun State Police Command, yesterday, disclosed its readiness to embark on the enumeration of churches located in an obscured environment in the state.

The new state Police Commissioner, Johnson Kokumo, disclosed this while parading 18 suspects connected to the disruption of the crossover party organised by Osun state government at the state Police Command Headquarters.

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He said enumeration of churches could curb situations where miscreants would be hiding under religion to perpetrate evil.

According to him, the killing of Miss Seun Favour of Lagos State University, LASU, at Ikoyi Ile was easy because no one in the community was attending the church or aware of the pastor’s activities.

Kokumo said: “As part of our proactive measures, we are embarking on enumeration of such churches and we will be proactive in our activities towards ensuring that the churches as we have them in various obscured places, bushes and the rest of them are real churches and of courses are not shrines or homes for ritual killing. “We will want to know their parent churches. You don’t just wake up one day and feel you can establish a church. We will look into who are the people attending such a church. The one at Ikoyi Ile, no single human being of that town is a member of that church. The supposed prophet is using the place as a criminal hideout for ritual purpose.”

He said that those arrested in connection with the disruption of the crossover programme will soon be arraigned in court.

“The criminals that were arrested in connection with a civil disturbance at the freedom park during the crossover night while people were engaged in prayers and happily expect the New Year to meet them and members of their families.

These ones took laws into their hands at the freedom park; they embark on act capable of disturbing public peace. We have rounded them up and will soon appear before the court. 18 of the suspects were arrested.”

He added that the command has also arrested two suspected kidnappers, Bolaji Jimoh and Babatunde Usman, who specialised in inter-state border kidnapping and were identified by one of their victims, who paid N3 million for his release.

The CP also warned criminals who believed could turn the state into a haven to stay off, as police would not make the state peaceful for miscreants.

“In our determination to ensure that we rid Osun State of criminal elements we embarked on proactive measures of raiding criminal hideout, blackspot and we have a total number of 16 criminal elements arrested from various hideout during the exercise and we are still investigating their activities with a view to bringing them to justice”, he added.

About 41 suspects were paraded for various crimes activities including civil disturbance, armed robbery, possession of Indian hemp, kidnapping among others.