….PARADE 36 out of 80 SUSPECTED CRIMINALS
Ondo State commandant of Amotekun Corps, Chief Adetunji Adeleye has said that Ondo State is not a place where criminals can thrive, even as the agency arrested 80 suspected criminals in the last three weeks.
He made this known while parading some criminal suspects on Friday, 27th of January, 2023 at the command headquarters.
Adeleye said that “In the last 3 weeks, 80 (suspected) criminals were arrested. In the last 1 week, about 32 were taken to court for prosecution, investigations are going on in most of these ones and some of them at the end of the day were found to be victims of circumstances.
“Like those that comes out without a means of identification at odd hours and are found where they are not supposed to be, those ones upon proper interrogation were released to go, some were released on bail”.
He added that the suspected criminals including women who engaged in various criminal activities ranging from murder, to anti grazing, stealing of motorcycles, stealing of grinding machine, stealing of keke napep, stealing of various houss household equipment, including generator, and armed robbery.
“Majority of these ones that we are parading today, having concluded the investigations, some of them will be going to court, early in the week next week. This is what we have been able to put together since last 3 weeks”.
“Criminal is criminal, regardless of where they come from, we don’t want to give color to criminality, a criminal is a criminal. Once you engage in criminal activities, the signal we are sending is that Ondo State a place where you can thrive as a criminal, the criminals should better leave Ondo State, not only within the town, but within the forest.
“Some of these criminals were arrested right inside the forest. Again, the anti open grazing law is in force in Ondo State where we discouraged the use of underaged for grazing, especially when they engage in destruction of farm products.”
“Some of them engaged in very massive destruction, we arrested some of those that were engaged in the destruction of one of the principal officers PDP that went viral, saying that his farm was destroyed, we caught them and we brought them to book, they are part of those people who are being paraded here, 4 of them were involved”.
“In the last two weeks, we observed increase in the rate of missing people within the town. And our discreet investigations reveal that most of these people board Okada that are not registered with SITA and are not registered with the okada association, even their bikes are not registered at all, so it becomes very difficult to identify them and majority of the victims that manage to escape that we interrogate there after, told us that those people that kidnapped put in hoods and put helmet on it”.
“That’s why were are discouraging people from boarding taxis that are not properly identified with registration number as well as okada that do not carry the requisites registration details. We are really pleading for the good citizens of the state not to board okada that does not carry proper registration as well as taxis that only put neon sign of taxi on their vehicles without being painted in taxi color and those without registration numbers because it becomes very difficult for us to track them down but we still remain on the fact that more than 85% of criminal activities are being perpetrated by these okada riders”.
“We have gotten the owners of farmland, we had equally allowed them to meet with the owners of the cows that destroyed their farmland and I think they are talking. But regardless of what they do, they had contravened the anti open grazing law, so they must fulfill the righteousness by going through the normal judicial system”.
“In conjunction with other security agencies, we are working seriously to get to the root of those behind the bodies found along Oda road, last week”.
He however urged those people who walks at night to always have with them a means of identification.
