The police in Niger State have arrested a 19-year-old man, Yakubu Tanko, of Tudun-Fulani area of Minna over allegedly killing his 14-year-old friend, Sikiru Tajudeen.
The suspect reportedly told the police that the victim gave him a phone to charge for him and that he conceived the idea of killing him to take over the phone.
Parading the suspect alongside others, the command’s spokesman, SP Wasiu Abiodun, said, “The victim was reported missing at the Bosso Division, that on March 19, at about 2130 hours he was not seen at home, and that later his school uniform’s trousers, a stick and a stone were found with the suspect with blood stains in his room.
“Later, around 1830 hours of March 20, information received from the community indicated that a strange odour was being perceived from a septic tank. After a proper check with the police, a sack was found in the tank. When evacuated, the lifeless body of Sikiru Tajudeen was found.”
He said the suspect told the police that on March 19, 2024, around 2pm, he met Sikiru in the room sleeping and picked a stick from the kitchen and hit him on the head, came back with a wheelbarrow after about two hours, evacuated the corpse and dumped it in the septic tank.
The command also paraded one 21-year-old Mustapha Ishaku suspected to be a gunrunner and dealer in AK-47 rifles in Minna.
SP Abiodun said the suspect, a resident of Kuta, headquarters of Shiroro LGA, was arrested in the Mandela area of Minna with three locally fabricated AK-47 rifles during an attempt to sell one of the rifles, and that during interrogation the suspect said he was a welder in Kuta and that he had been working with one Bala (at large) who specialised in carving the wooden parts of the rifles, while he Ishaku) fabricated the iron parts.
Abiodun further said that Ishaku confessed that he had sold three of the rifles in Izom at the rate of N100,000 each