Lagos police arrest 40 ‘Awawa hoodlums’

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, says that the command has intensified its efforts to rein in members of a cult group in the Agege area of the state, whom he described as “hoodlums and very dangerous”.

The cultists, widely known in Lagos, and in Agege particularly as ‘Awawa boys’, have assumed wide notoriety in the Lagos metropolis as killers, robbers and rapists.

Edgal disclosed that the police rounded up about 40 members of the cult group in the latest raid of their hideout on Friday November 2, 2018.

At a press conference at the Command Headquarters on Monday, the police boss expressed worry that the Awawa boys had become a serious menace to residents of Agege and its environs.

Some police sources at the conference told Daily Trust that the Awawa boys publicly robbed and maimed their victims, and as well raped some women and their daughters as they flaunted their strength and dominance in the Agege area.

Edgal said that various dangerous weapons like guns, axes, cutlasses and hammers, as well as charms were recovered from members of the cult group that the police arrested.

He said that during interrogation, the suspects claimed their herbalists had assured them the charms would make them invincible but wondered why the charms failed and the police were able to arrest them.

Edgal gave the names of those arrested as including Olarenwaju Shakiru Ashamu, 30; Aloye Godwin, 24; Ibrahim Yakubu, 19; Seun Fawole, 30; Macarty Taiwo, 27; Otobong Saturday, 27; Otobong James, 25; Ismaila Isha, 34; Saliu Dauda, 19; and Chinedu Ogu, 24.