*The success story of the Lagos Police Command

By Ifeanyi Okolie

The police in Lagos State appear to have adopted a more aggressive approach in taming the tide of armed robbery and other criminal activities rocking the state.   The new approach came following the reaction of the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, to the Sunday, September 9, 2012, robbery incident which claimed over six lives including three policemen, while several others sustained bullet injuries.

The IGP urged the police command to hunt for the perpetrators of the heinous crime and ensure that the incident does not repeat itself.

Police sources intimated Department ‘C’ that the State Commissioner, Umar Manko, swiftly ordered an increase of police visibility across the state, which also saw a slight return of police check points in areas considered to be black spots.

Intelligence gathering was said to have been reinvigorated, as operatives at the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, were saddled with the duty of further strengthening contacts with informants, vigilante groups and intensifying their ITC tracking method.

These strategies have since paid off.

First was the arrest of two members of the robbery gang that terrorized the state on that fateful Sunday.  Though the robbers identified as Rasheed Sulaimon and Kazeem Enifolabi, confessed to being members of the gang but they explained that they didn’t take part in that day’s operation; they claimed one of their colleagues who did, called and informed them of the operation; he even said that he was given recharge cards worth N3000.

Their arrest, according to police sources, gave the police their first lead on the gang of robbers that carried out that Sunday operation.  A police source further revealed that an informant who was contacted few days after the robbery operation gave the police the needed information that led to the arrest of the suspects.   One Ak 47 rifle and two fully loaded magazines were recovered from them when police raided their hideout at the Agege area of the state.

“Those guys told us who we should be looking for and their escapade.  They explained that the robbers that carried out that operation were from three different gangs. One of them is headed by one Yemi and that the others gangs were those of Sule and Oyebuchi.   They said they belong to Yemi’s gang and they do not know the address of the other gang leaders. So, we raided Yemi’s hide out in Agege but we missed him as he got wind of our search for him and he escaped, the source added.

Interestingly, while the police were making efforts in tracking down the fleeing members of the gang, the officer in charge of SARS, Abba Kyari, got a call from the leader of a vigilante group at in Imude community, Otto-Awori Local Council Development Area, Lagos, about an unnamed UK-based Nigerian businessman was robbed and was dispossessed of a huge sum of money and other valuables.   The vigilante group’s leader told Kyari that their only suspect was the man’s tenant who was aware that his landlord was on his way back from London.

Now, acting on the tip-off, Kyari swiftly mobilized his men and they stormed the apartment where they met the suspect identified as Uchendu Okeagu and two others.

A police source who took part in the operation said the moment the police confronted Uchendu with the robbery allegation, he immediately offered a one million naira bribe to the police but it was turned down.

“When we got to Uchendu’s apartment we met him and two other persons.  He quickly offered us money when we confronted him with the allegation that he staged and robbed his landlord but our ‘OC’ rejected the money and asked him give us the weapon they used for the operation because the landlord said the robbers used AK 47 rifles while they attacked him.   He denied having such weapons but we whisked him and the other guys we met in his apartment to our office for interrogation.  It was in the process of interrogation that Uchendu and Chinonso confessed to being members one of the gangs that took part in that Sunday robbery incident.
They said their gang is headed by Oyenbuchi and after they carried out the Sunday robbery incident, they quickly moved to Kwara State where they raided a bank and also a police station.
“We asked them to give us their weapons and they took us back to his house and showed us two empty Volkswagen buses parked in the compound.

We were stunned when they pulled off the tarpaulin cover from a ditch that was constructed under the bus; behold we discovered one rocket propelled grenade launcher, 225 AK 47 magazines fully-loaded, over 10,000 rounds of AK 47 live ammunitions, two general purpose machine guns, 260 rounds of GPMG live ammunition, five packages of dynamite with detonators and nine AK 47 rifles.
They also gave us names of other members of their gangs and they confessed that they also took part in other robbery operations at the branches of three new generation banks and a first generation bank brach in Akure, Ondo State; Osogbo, in Osun State; Okene, in Kogi State; and Auchi, in Edo State”, the source narrated.

The latest discovery in the continuing engagement was the discovery of seven AK-47 rifles, five pieces of dynamites and bombs, 59 fully loaded magazines, one K2 rifle, one Lar rifle with 20 rounds of ammunition, one magazine, three pump action guns, one single barrel gun and 15 cartridges inside a Toyota Sienna bus parked along Adanloko-Jakande Road, Ajangbadi. Department ‘C’ gathered that the weapons belonged to a seven man of armed robbery gang that has been terrorizing the state for a long time, but the bus was discovered through the help of a reliable police informant who was recruited in the latest bid by the police to dislodge the state of armed robbers.

One Kingsley Ekwueme, 30, was later arrested in connection with the recovered deadly weapons.  When Department ‘C’ spoke with the suspect, he confessed to being the gang’s armourer, stating that he usually got between N40,000 to N50,000 from the gang.     According to him, the leader of the gang is one Izunna and his brother. “We are from the same village and we are very close. He owns these weapons and he has several boys that work with him. I know a lot of them because I used to sit with them some times. I know they were armed robbers but I have never gone to rob with them; all I do for him is to keep this vehicle.  I use to park it in my other brothers house in Jakande, Ajangbadi, but their tenants started complaining that I should remove the vehicle so I drove it and parked it beside a mechanic work shop and I don’t know how the police got to know about it and they picked the bus”, he lamented.

As the Police continue to chart new courses in its bid to dislodge criminals from their dens, it is hoped that members of society would continue to assist the police with useful information.