Police parade 40 suspects, mop-up 78 guns in Abuja
The police in Abuja have paraded 40 suspects arrested for various crimes in the city alongside 78 guns and 222 ammunitions voluntarily surrendered in compliance with the Inspector General of Police’s directives.
FCT Police Commissioner, Sadiq Bello while parading the suspects yesterday said in view of the expiration of the period approved by the IGP for the voluntary submission of the prohibited firearms, the command will commence mopup exercise which will include raids, cordon-and-search of premises where the firearms are reasonably suspected to be kept.
Bello said the command also recovered several exhibits from the suspects, including: 11 vehicles, three cutlasses, eight fabricated locally-made pistols with nine ammunition, nine television sets and one toy gun.
He said that two suspects, Samuel Jatau, 22 and Emmanuel Friday, 28 were arrested sequel to a report that a lady was robbed of her car and ATM cards at gunpoint which the suspects used to withdraw money from the victim’s account.
“In the course of investigation, Friday was identified as the receiver. His arrest led to the recovery of six robbed cars that were sold at Uyo and PortHarcourt,” Bello said.
Jatau while fielding questions from journalist, said he has stolen eight cars since he joined the car snatching syndicate in January, 2018. “Since last year January, I met one of my friends and he connected me with their gang and we started taking the cars. Since I joined the gang, we have taken up to eight cars. I do go with my friends and collect the car at gunpoint from the owners, most especially where they park,” he said.
Another suspect, Samuel Mari, 25, paraded for allegedly stealing from his friend said he stole the money through Internet banking while his friend was sleeping.
Narrating how he committed the crime, Habila said, “There was a day we went to the ATM together and it was that day I saw and crammed his pin when he was withdrawing N3,000 from his account. So I registered his account on my mobile banking application and I changed his pin. So, while he was sleeping, I transferred the money from his account to my own account.”
Asked what motivated the act, he said, “Let me just say it is the handwork of the devil. When I transferred the money to my account, I used it to buy a Golf 3 car.”