Ogun State has been in the news in the past couple of months for the increasing crime, prompting the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, to order the deployment of additional units to the state to combat the upsurge.
A few days after the deployment of police personnel by the Inspector General, operatives swooped on identified communities, arresting more than 150 suspects in connection with the spate of robberies and cult-related activities in the state.
The then state Commissioner of Police, Kenneth Ebrimson, now retired, conducted journalists round the troubled areas after he paraded 150 suspects arrested in most of the affected areas.
Ebrimson however refuted reports that armed robbers had taken over some parts of Ifo and Ado-Odo/Ota local government areas of the state.
He said it was rather cult clashes among seven rival groups within the areas as a result of the killing of a member of one of the groups. He identified the cult groups as Ilena Boys, Federal Boys, Lemon Boys, Base Boys, Sahara Boys, Gbese Boys and Marindoti Boys.
Ebrimson listed items recovered from the suspects as locally made guns, live cartridges, knives, handsets, a large quantity of cannabis, many cutlasses, axe and saw.
400 suspects paraded between April and September
Investigations by our correspondent revealed that between April and September 2020, crimes ranging from rape, cultism, highway robbery and kidnapping to murder, house-to-house robbery and theft had been recorded in many parts of the state.
He said the police had also been battling internet crimes. On March 12, the Ibadan zonal office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested 48 suspected internet fraudsters in Abeokuta, the state capital. The commission has equally secured scores of convictions during the period.
The police paraded more than 400 suspects for different crimes between April and September.
Since April this year when suspected armed robbers began capitalizing on the coronavirus lockdown to terrorize residents in about six communities in Ifo and Ado-Odo Ota local government areas, the state seems to have occupied the top chart in crime within the South-west states.
Some of the communities affected are Owode, Ilepa, Ifo, Arigbajo, Itori, Dalemo, Ijoko, Joju, Sango and Ota.
In Abeokuta, residents have been keeping vigil in a proactive step to stop hoodlums from wreaking havoc in their homes.
“We don’t have to wait till they storm our communities before we act, it’s our collective responsibility to keep our communities safe. All adult males in each household participate in this night watch.
“We divide ourselves into groups at many strategic points in the community. We set up bonfires during the vigil usually between 11am and 3pm,” a resident, Mukaila Ajao, told our correspondent.
In July, the police command paraded 103 suspects for alleged involvement in cultism, vandalism, and armed robbery, among others.
Of the 103 suspects, no fewer than 61 suspected cultists were arrested in different parts of the state in connection with cultists’ annual “7/7 celebration”.
Rape cases rise
Prominent among other arrested suspects was a 44-year-old pastor at Ogo Oluwa, Oluwafemi Oyebola, for allegedly raping his own daughter (name withheld).
In early August, the police paraded 28 suspects, including a clergyman, Prophet Ebenezer Ajigbotoluwa, who allegedly raped and impregnated two under-aged sisters.
Robbers’ reign of terror
Perhaps, one of the biggest crimes committed in the state during the period was by the late suspected serial killer and drug addict, Feyisola Samuel Dosumu, alias Spartan, who for more than five months terrorized residents of Ogere, Iperu, Ilisan and other communities in Ikenne Local Government Area. He killed about eight people within three days during his reign of terror in May.
Dosunmu was eventually gunned down after many weeks of police hunt. A resident who pleaded anonymity said Dosumu used to be a patient at the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Aro, Abeokuta, but escaped to Ogere community. Another resident said he began having mental issues after joining a cult group in school and became a drug addict.
Our correspondent learnt that Dosumu, a graduate of the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, killed two private guards working at an agro farm and one elderly Togolese on a Thursday in May. He was also said to have killed an unidentified teenager at Ogere 24 hours after and reportedly macheted two others to death at Iperu Remo. Dosumu reportedly struck again in July when he hacked two other persons to death.
He was declared wanted on July 31 by the police, with a bounty of N1 million placed on him.
Security operatives finally located his hideout in Ogere, tracked and shot him dead in a two-day operation involving the police and other local security groups like the Agbekoyas, So-Safe Corps and the vigilante.
A little safer than neighbours?
The commander of the state-owned security outfit, So-Safe Corps, Commander Soji Ganzallo, however told Daily Trust on Sunday that Ogun State was relatively peaceful when compared with other states.
Ganzallo said, “We cannot totally eradicate crime in the society. What we can do is to reduce it to the barest minimum.”
He maintained that the state government’s assistance and synergy with security agencies in the state had led to a reduction in the crime rate.
Governor moves into action
As part of efforts to curb the crime wave, Governor Dapo Abiodun in June inaugurated the state’s community policing advisory committee chaired by the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona.
Abiodun said, “Community policing is cheaper, more effective and efficient, and certainly proactive in the prevention of crime.”
Prior to this, the governor sought an amendment to the State Security Trust Fund Law. Shortly after the amendment was done, he inaugurated a committee on the fund headed by Bolaji Balogun to source for money for the acquisition and deployment of security equipment and human materials and financial resources that would be necessary to prevent crime.
A few months after the committee was inaugurated, Abiodun donated 100 patrol vehicles and 200 motorcycles to the state police command as part of efforts to assist the police to effectively combat crime.
How Ogun’s neighbours are coping
Elsewhere in the South-west, the police commissioner Ogun’s close neighbor, Lagos, Hakeem Odumosu, said the command had arrested close to 600 suspects for their alleged involvement in different crimes in the metropolis in the past six months.
It is usually believed that the crime wave filters from Lagos to Ogun and vice-versa, being very close neighbours with identical tradition and features. Police spokesman, Frank Mba, in a reaction, said intelligence, operational and tactical units were needed to respond to the activities of “hoodlums and street urchins” on the border between the two states.
Odumosu said the figure excluded about 5,000 persons that were arrested for violating the Covid-19 guidelines during the lockdown period.
He said crimes committed ranged from kidnapping, robbery, gun-running, cultism, murder, rape and child theft.
Giving a breakdown, he said a gun manufacturer nabbed in Ajah was among the 300 robbery suspects arrested in August 2020.
According to him, the gun manufacturer and his accomplices came from Benue State to deliver arms and ammunition to some criminals in Lagos. The suspects were named as Shapraku Umade 19, Moses Anzuur 19, and James Tsebee, 20.
The police commissioner also said the command arrested 41 armed robbery suspects and successfully foiled 28 armed robbery operations in July.
“The command also killed one robbery suspect during an exchange of gunfire with the police, while 195 suspects were arrested for cultism.
“Similarly, four suspects were arrested for kidnapping, while 52 others were nabbed for murder. The state also recorded six cases of suicide and prevented four suicide attempts during the same period,” he added.
Odumosu said the command, in the same month, arrested 30 suspects for alleged rape and defilement, while 23 suspects were arrested for alleged domestic violence and two suspects for child abuse.
No increase, but we are handling the situation – Police
But reacting, the spokesman of the Ogun State Police Command, DSP Abimbola Oyeyemi, denied increase in the crime rate in the state.
He told Daily Trust on Sunday that the police had explored community policing to the fullest and strengthened its synergy with local hunters, vigilante groups, the state owned security outfit, the So-Safe Corps, and other stakeholders to check crime.
Oyeyemi said; “I disagree. There is nothing like an increase in crime. When you are talking about crime, you have to be specific. Though, there is no society without crime, but the ability of the agencies concerned to curb it is what matters most. We have pockets of crime here and there, but we have been on top of the situation.
“The little crime does not indicate that there is an increase in the crime rate. We have been working assiduously to ensure those who perpetrate the crimes are brought to book.”
Security worsens in Oyo
In Oyo State, another Ogun neighbour, there is noticeable increase in robberies, ritual killings and thuggery in the state, our correspondent reports.
Apart from the incessant ritual killings concentrated in a local government, Akinyele Local Government Area of the state which claimed seven lives in the last three months, there was increase in cultism and thuggery.
In April, seven persons were arrested in connection with the kidnap of two-year-old twins of an Ibadan-based Islamic cleric, Sheik Taofeek Akewugbagold.
The suspected kidnappers were Mohammed Bashir, 33, Oyeleye Opeyemi, 25, Olumide Ajala, 36, Taiwo Ridwan, 30, Rafiu Mutiu, 35, Fatai Akanji, 49, and Modinat Rafiu, 29, according to the police.
Others arrested and paraded along with the abductors are Rildwan Taiwo, 30; Olumide Ajala, 36; Fatai Akanji, 39; Bashiru Mohammed, 33; Opeyemi Oyeleye, 25 (all males); Mutiu Rafiu, 35; and a female suspect, Modinat Rafiu, 29.
After that, a few weeks ago, unknown gunmen suspected to be armed robbers killed a middle-age man, Taoreed Olusola, along Government House road in Agodi, Ibadan at 1:30pm, after collecting about N446,000 from him.
A week earlier, three armed robbers attacked a First Bank branch in Okeho, Kajola Local Government Area.
Akinyele Local Government area of the State, about 29 kilometres from Ibadan, the state capital, recorded seven ritual killings between June and August this year.
The first which took place on June 1 at Akinyele town involved one Miss Baraka Bello, a female student of the Department of Laboratory Technology, Federal College of Animal Health and Production, Moor Plantation, Ibadan who was reportedly raped and killed. The killer smashed her head at the back of her father’s house at Oloro, Kara in Akinyele town.
On June 5, ritualists also smashed the head of a 29-year-old woman, Mrs. Azeezat Somuyiwa, who at the time carried a seven months old pregnancy, near Ojoo. Also, on June 13, a National Diploma student of the Oke Ogun Polytechnic, Saki, Grace Osiagwu, 21, was killed at Idi Ori, Sasa, Ojoo, Ibadan.
On June 22, a five-year-old boy, Mujib Tirimisiyu, was killed by a man who reportedly hit the boy’s head with a shovel at Olorunsogo Phase II, Tose, Moniya, Ibadan, when he was defecating behind their house.
On June 24, 2020, the life of 42-year-old Mrs. Olusayo Fagbemi, who resided at Ajibade Street, Sasa, Ibadan, was cut short by ritual killers. She was attacked when washing plates in front of her residence in the morning and hit with a dangerous weapon on her head.
Also, a woman and her daughter were attacked at Balogun village, near Moniya, the headquarters of Akinyele Local Government by ritual killers three weeks before Barakat was killed at Akinyele.
The spokesman of the police command in Oyo State, Olugbemiga Fadeyi, said crime cannot be eradicated in any society but can only be reduced to the barest minimum, which he said the state command had been doing over the years.
He noted that it is only people who are committing crime that can say the reason behind their motives, adding that the police were working hard to reduce the rate of crime in the state.
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