Nigeria Content Online

The Ogun State Police Command yesterday
announced a major breakthrough in crime fighting with the recovery of
heavy artillery, which includes rocket launchers and a number of
dynamites from armed robbers, as well as the arrest of two members of
the gang.

The bandits were said to have arrived
Abeokuta last Tuesday to rob some banks in the town, after their failed
attempt in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, where they had earlier killed
three policemen.

Showing the recovered artillery and the
arrested suspects to journalists at the Eleweran Police headquarters in
Abeokuta, commissioner of police, Musa Daura, said the command acted on
information about the plot of the bandits.

He said he deployed his men to the
front gate of the police headquarters, where the bandits were to pass
through to the town, adding that the hoodlums, on sighting the
policemen, immediately opened fire.

“It was at this stage my men engaged
the bandits in a shootout, which lasted for over 20 minutes, and the
superior firework of the command forced the gang to abandon their
vehicle and ran into various directions into the bush at a nearby
village.”

From all over

The commissioner said the police arrested two of the seven suspects and recovered their operational vehicle, a Hyundai Elantra.

Items recovered from the vehicle and
shown to journalists included one military multi-purpose machine gun
number KN 276, two military rocket launchers, four dynamites, three
strands of explosive cords, 115 magazines painted military colour fully
loaded with 30 rounds of live ammunitions each, and a Mazda bus
snatched by the bandits to escape from the scene of the shootout.

One of the robbery suspects, Obinna
Ajah, confessed to the crime. He said his gang members converged in
Ibadan, on Monday night, to carry out the bank robbery operations,
which eventually failed. He said it was as a result of the failed
operations in Ibadan that the gang resolved to visit Abeokuta, before
luck ran against them.

“When we arrived Abeokuta, we noticed
the presence of policemen who already mounted road block for us, so we
opened fire, which the police also returned in force. We had to run
into the bush where I was later arrested,” Mr. Obinna said.

The suspect said the gang, numbering
about fifteen, came from Lagos, Ebonyi, Abeokuta, and Ibadan for the
operations after contacting themselves through telephones.

Happy Daniel

Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel, who
came to see the volume of the recovered artillery and the suspects
while being paraded said, “what we saw here today looks like a joke,
but it is something very big. Capturing them is just one issue, but the
amount of sophisticated weapons which you have all seen is something
that is very scary. It’s also something that we have not witnessed in
this state.”

He congratulated the police for overpowering the bandits. Mr. Daura
assured journalists that the runaway members of the gang will soon be
arrested.