Lagos State Police Command said yesterday it recovered 188 guns and 280 ammunition between September and last weekend.
Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal, who spoke at a news briefing in Ikeja, said among the weapons were those voluntarily returned by residents in compliance with directives of the Inspector-General of Police (IG), Ibrahim Idris.
The IG ordered owners of illegal arms to return them from March 1 to April 28 or be arrested.
Edgal said the command had made efforts in the recovery of illegal arms.
Giving a breakdown, he listed the arms as 38 pump action rifles, six AK47 rifles, 12 double barrel guns, 70 locally-made cut-to-size single guns, 42 locally-made double barrel shot guns, 18 locally-made revolvers and three Barretta pistols.
The police commissioner said: “We have recovered arms from bandits and those voluntarily returned to the police armoury by their owners, who took advantage of the 21-day grace period given by the IGP for anyone in possession of illegal and prohibited firearms to hand them over to the police.
“Thirty eight pump action rifles, six AK47 rifles, 12 double barrel rifles,11 single barrel rifles, 70 single barrel locally-made cut-to-size short guns, 42 locally-made double barrel short guns, 18 locally-made revolver pistol and three barretal pistols have been recovered.
“In total, we have 188 recovered guns, 220 cartridges and 60 7.62 MM AK47 ammunition. These guns were recovered between September 2017 and March 2018. We urge anyone in possession of prohibited firearms to return them, as we will soon get to the next stage of the exercise, which is going into houses, buildings and other structures to recover prohibited firearms.”
He said some of the weapons were recovered from a car snatching syndicate specialising in stealing posh vehicles.
Edgal said they usually stole vehicles from other parts of the country and brought them to Lagos for sale as fairly-used (Tokunbo) cars.
He said Ridwan Mamud, 23; Oyesanmi Kazeem, 31 and Usman Umar, 42, were arrested at their Ajegunle hideout, adding that seven vehicles were recovered from them.
The police boss said: “The recovered vehicles are Toyota Highlander 2012 model (APP965CY), Toyota RAV4 (RBC864HW), Toyota Matrix, Toyota Camry saloon car, Blue Honda saloon car, ash Mazda space bus, all without registration numbers.
“The second set of weapons were recovered from members of an armed gang who were arrested after they stole a Lexus sport utility vehicle where it was parked in front of a hotel in Ajah. Their arrest followed a complaint made by Ajayi Adedotun on March 19. Based on the complaint, operatives of the Federal Special Anti- Robbery Squad (FSARS) went after the fleeing gunmen and nabbed them.”
