Four Air Force Personnel and seven others were on Monday paraded by the Lagos Commissioner of Police, Acting CP Edgal Imohimi for allegedly vandalizing and selling off iron pipes belonging to the Lagos State Government Water Corporation.
The Air Force men identified as Akingbola Wole, Ugbong Abel, Alalifu George and Kumish Revelation who are new intakes were allegedly contacted by a staff of the Lagos State Water Corporation, Olayiwole Oyedele and were arrested in the Doyin area of Lagos by a decoy team of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Lagos State Command.
While parading the suspects at the Command Headquarters in Ikeja CP Edgal disclosed that the suspects were arrests following an information received by the intelligence unit of the command.
“Some group of armed robbers with some Air Force personnel wearing military camouflage had stormed the Doyin Bustop of Orile vandalizing iron pipe belonging to Lagos State Government Water Corporation with one clerk crane and an Iveco G3 truck with Reg. No. MUS 772 XD. “On investigation, two decoy team of SARS operatives were mobilized to Orile to monitor the situation and in the process, seven of the suspects were arrested while vandalizing the iron pipe with four Air Force personnel giving them security back up to avoid police interference at the point of loading the iron pipe.
Oyedele who is the mastermind of the robbery activity claimed he had worked with the Lagos State Water Corporation for 22 years and revealed that the iron pipes had been abandoned by the agency for a while. In his confession, Oyedele claimed it was his first time of engaging in such act and that he had intended to sell the pipes to one Okechukwu Alozie who had agreed to pay him the sim of N650, 000 for the items.
” i work with the distribution department of the corporation and I have been working there since 1994. We had gone to repair the pipes there and had removed the bad once. Normally we would return the spoilt iron pipe to the office and then we sell them off there. On this particular case, I just felt it would be a waste of time taking it back to the office so I choose to sell it off at the location. ” when I went there the first time to carry the items, area boys didn’t allow me carry them so I went to contact my friend Wole who I asked to organise his friends to help me go to Orile to carry the pipes. ” he told me i would pay them N35,000 and i gave them a deposit of N20,000 but we wee unfortunate as we were caught by the police. For Wole, the story was different as he claimed he didn’t know they were vandalised items.
He said, ” I had asked him for a pass from his office to carry theiron pipes and his should be a paper to that effect. I even took him to the Orile Police Division for clarity but unfortunately they tagged me and my friends robbers. ” On why he had collected N20, 000 from Oyedele, he claimed it was just a token to help scare the area boys disturbing Oyedele and his boys.
The names of the other suspects were also given as Wale Lawal, Babatunde Samson, Ismaila Adejare, Iliasu Ibrahim and Ikechukwu Ezemba. The Commissioner of Police stated that the Air Force Personnel who serve with the 055 Base in NAF Camp in Victoria Island will be handed over to the command for appropriate disciplinary action before they are sent back to the police for prosecution.
Additional report from Daily Times
