The former officers
identified as Sgt. Ochigbo Gabriel and Sgt. Francis Onuh were arrested
alongside Emmanuel Audu, James Momoh and Sunday Onuh by men of the
Inspector-General of Police Special Intelligence Response Team in the state.
The ex-police
officers, who were dismissed from the force for different offences in 2009 over
their involvement in various illegal activities in Warri, Delta State, decided
to take up the tools of armed robbery.
Audu, 33, said he
joined the Nigeria Police in 2003.
The 33-year-old
Audu, who joined the police in 2003, and was dismissed as a constable in 2009,
told journalists that shortly after he lost his job, he relocated to Lagos and
became a dispatch rider until December last year when he was looking for a job
and met Peter Owocho, another member of the gang who introduced him to the
gang.
Audu disclosed that
he had participated in all the operations carried out by the gang.
He said he used his
share of their loot to run his family and pay his children’s school fees.
He said, “I live at
Ikorodu with my family. I took part in all the operations, but I was arrested
on June 7, 2016 by the police.”
A police source told
Punch that the suspects specialised in robbing Chinese nationals in different
parts of Lagos State.
According to the
source, the suspects who were apprehended during an operation at the homes of
four Chinese nationals in Gbagada, had carried out no fewer than 10 robberies
between December 2015 and June 2016.
The source said,
“The dismissed policemen normally gain access into the homes of the Chinese men
under the pretence of conducting routine checks, or that they had information
that they (the Chinese) were involved in drugs and currency counterfeiting.
“When they are
allowed into their homes, the dismissed policemen would ransack the apartments
and cart away all valuables including cash and electronic gadgets.”
One of the suspects,
33-year-old Sunday told newsmen that he had National Diploma in Business
Administration.
He said he lost his
job shortly before his marriage, and met a member of the robbery gang, known as
Jack introduced him to their operations.
He said, “He told me
he would introduce me to a business. That was when I learnt that it involved
robbing Chinese expatriates.
“He said we would go
to the houses of some Chinese people and pretend to be engineers and that if
they allowed us in, we would rob them. He said if they were not at home, we
would break in.
“Three of us went
for the operation at Omole and we opened the door with a metal cutter since
there was no one in the house. We stole phones, laptops and cash. I wouldn’t
know how much we got, but I was given N500,000 cash.
“At the operation in
Gbagada, we wore coveralls and told the expatriates we wanted to repair
electricity cables and they opened their doors for us. We went in and robbed
them of their phones, laptop and money. I got N45,000 as my share after that operation.”
He confessed further
that the locally-made revolver pistol they used for operations belonged to
Jack, and he was able to buy a car for taxi before he was arrested, after
policemen traced one of the phones they stole at Gbagada to him.
Source
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