CRIME Robbed female Kwara poly Police arrest LG boss, others over murder students return to hostel

Some students of the Kwara State Polytechnic who were attacked by armed robbers recently have started returning to their hostel after fleeing to unknown destinations.

The robbery, which occurred at about 11.00pm according to eyewitness accounts, had made the ladies and other occupants to desert the hostel, located along Bukola Bukoye Street in Oyun area of the state capital.

The said hostel has eight self-contained apartments, mainly occupied by ladies.

The robbers were said to have scaled the fancy low fence built around the house and subsequently tampered with the choke of the two small generating sets that were being used to power two of the apartments in order to increase the volume of noise from the sets and thereby prevent neighbours from hearing what was going on.

Some of the items carted away by the robbers include three iPhone 7, two Plasma TV sets, six laptops, one iPad, two gold-plated waist beads, one gold-plated nose ring, and a cash of N200 ,000. They also reportedly went away with the ATM cards of one of their victims.

Meanwhile, operatives of the Federal SARS initially arrested the landlord of the hostel following allegations that the female students had been paying about N2, 000 each as monthly contribution for the provision of security services for the premises without anything allegedly being done. The man was, however, released later in the day.

When contacted, Kwara State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Ajayi Okasanmi, denied knowledge of the incident, saying it might not have been reported to the command’s headquarters as at the time of inquiry. The police in Akwa Ibom State have arrested the Transition Committee Chairman of Ukanafun Local Government Area, Abasiono Udomfu, his assistant, Akaninyene Ibuot, and one other person over the murder of the council’s late Secretary, Ime Atakpa.

Atakpa was murdered on Sunday, April 16, 2017, by gunmen in his farm in the village, and since then, the police have been trailing his killers.

A family source to the late secretary, who preferred anonymity, told journalists in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, that Udomfu, the Transition Committee Chairman, had during a visit of the wife of the governor, Martha Udom Emmanuel, to the area to commission a housing project for widows, raised up his hands unannounced and said: “God knows that my hands are clean concerning the murder of the late Local Government Secretary.”

Thereafter, the source said, the chairman’s personal assistant, Akaninyene Ibout, added his voice, saying that his hands were also clean and that he did not have anything to do with the killing of the late Atakpa

“After the event where the council’s transition chairman and his assistant declared their innocence in the murder, the police arrested them the following day. On interrogation by the police intelligence team, Ibuot, was said to have named the chairman and two others of involvement in the murder of the secretary.

The other two suspects are now cooperating with the police, and they said that the chairman paid them the sum of N300, 000 to kill the secretary. They were arrested in Port Harcourt on a tip off, the source alleged.

It was also gathered that Udomfu had made serious efforts to bribe the policemen who arrested him but was not successful. Calls and text messages put to the Akwa Ibom Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Chukwu Ikechukwu, by our correspondent to get his reaction on the issue were not responded to.