Seven men suspected of murdering an America-trained soldier, Chuks Okebata, on January 12, 2017, in Okigwe area of Imo State, have been arrested by the operatives of the Inspector General of Police Special Intelligence Response Team (IRT).
The suspects are: Sunday Igwe, alias, School Boy; Michael Ahamefula; Oyebuchi Echefule; Ndubusi Isaac; Victor Dagogo; Chima Okoro and John Edet.
According to a police source, the suspects were rounded up at separate locations in Imo, Abia and Rivers states.
Two AK-47 rifles and six magazines loaded with 127 live ammunition were recovered from them.
Sources said efforts to apprehend the suspects, who were said to have carried out several high profile kidnappings and armed robbery operations around Imo, Abia and Rivers states, commenced a few months after the America-trained soldier was kidnapped and killed.
The source also disclosed that several persons who had fallen victim of the gang’s activities wrote petitions to the Acting Inspector General of Police, Adamu Mohammed, alerting him of their plights.
“Consequently, the crack team of operatives, led by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, was deployed in the South East to track down the suspects and bring their activities to an end.
“Based on the information provided by some of the victims, the IRT operatives in Abia State trailed the leader of the gang, School-Boy, to a hotel in Aba and apprehended him there.”
A member of the IRT team, who did not want his name in print because he was not authorised to comment on the issue, said they were on the trail of the gang leader for six months. “We eventually arrested him and recovered two AK-47 rifles and six magazine loaded with 127 live ammunition from him. Then, we went after his gang members and arrested his second- in -command, Michael Ahamefula, alongside another gang member, Oyebuchi Echefule, in a hotel in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
“We went on to arrest Ndubusi Isaac, Victor Dagogo, Chima Okoro and John Edet, who are members of the gang in Orlu and Aba areas of Imo and Abia states.”
In their confessional statements, the suspects said they were members of a deadly armed robbery and kidnapping gang terrorising Imo, Abia and Rivers states.
The leader of the gang, School-Boy, said Okebata, was killed because he tried to kill them after he was kidnapped.
He explained that he and members of his gang didn’t know that Okebata had a pistol with him at the time he was kidnapped.
His words: “We threw him into the boot of our operational vehicle after he was kidnapped and we didn’t know who he was. While we were heading to our camp where we would keep him and negotiate for his ransom, he pulled out his gun and started shooting at us from the boot and the bullet hit me on the leg and the driver on his hand.
“Sensing that danger was lurking, I quickly asked that the driver should stop the vehicle. After stopping the vehicle, we disarmed, killed him on the spot and we dumped his body inside a gutter and left.
“I want everyone to understand that I had no intention of killing him but he forced us into doing it.”
The 29-year-old gang leader, who is a native of Bende Local Government Area of Abia State and a secondary school dropout, narrated how he went into crime. “After I dropped out of school in 2009, I went to Iwofe area of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where you have Eagles Cement and learnt how to drive trucks. In 2010, I met some boys, Oshare and Op, at a smoking joint and they introduced me into crime. We started by snatching people’s cars and my job was to drive the cars out of town and mostly to Eleme area of Port Harcourt, where those cars were sold off and I earned N20,000 for each operation.
“After a while, I went to my village and I met one of my brothers known as Samuel, who was also into car snatching and he allowed me to join his gang. I was linked to the gang leader, KC, and we started snatching cars in Aba town. Samuel was the owner of the guns we were using to snatch the cars.
“There was also one Ejike, who was a member of our gang but his job was to drive us in his car to the locations where we would snatch the cars and I was getting N60,000 after each operation.”
After mastering the act of car snatching, the dare-devil hoodlum later added kidnapping to his ungodly trade. He continued: “While we were on this (car snatching), I met one Mazi, who introduced me to kidnapping. He wanted a place where he would be keeping his kidnapped victims. I provided my family’s house in the village and I was equally looking after the victims after they had been kidnapped. Later on, some DSS men came looking for him and they shot at me and got me injured, but I escaped and was taken to the hospital where I spent eight months.
“When I returned, I met KC (former head of the car snatching gang) again. This time, he was already into kidnapping and had Ak-47rifles. I teamed up with him and we started kidnapping.
“Our first operation was in Imo State. We had no specific targets; all we did was to move round the city looking for people with flashy cars and when we saw one, we would follow and kidnap the owner.”
During one of their operations, he said: “There was this man we followed but we didn’t know that he had policemen with him and the moment the policemen came down, we opened fire on them, killed them on the spot and we collected their rifles and kidnapped a man we found inside the vehicle. We didn’t know the man we kidnapped was just a driver and he wasn’t the owner of the vehicle or the person the policemen were protecting.
“We had also kidnapped one other person on the road before that incident and we took the two victims to our camp.After that operation, we all became very tired and slept off for a long time and our victims, who we left unguarded, escaped and alerted the police.”
By the time they woke up, School Boy as he is fondly called, said: “We realised that policemen were everywhere looking for us but KC was unlucky as he was gunned down while he was trying to escape. The police recovered one of his rifles.
We consequently stopped operations for a long time but later resumed when we thought the police were no longer looking for us. We went into kidnapping a gain.
“The night we killed the America-trained soldier, we had three rifles with us and we went out looking for victims. We saw a man and tried to kidnap him but the man noticed we were after him and ran away but we pursued him.
“When we caught up with his vehicle, we met it empty and the key wasn’t in it. We continued with our journey.
When we spotted the America-trained soldier in his Infinity SUV, we went after it and kidnapped him. “Unfortunately, we put him in the back of the vehicle not knowing that he had a gun with him. So, when we got to Ata Junction on Okigwe Road, the soldier started shooting, his bullet hit me on my hand.
“He also shot the driver on the leg. I came out and killed the soldier and dumped his body inside the gutter. After that operation, I lost all my guns because some IRT operatives swooped on Mazi and Ejike and they took my guns from them. I ran to Ghana when the IRT operatives were searching for me. I returned to Nigeria in November 2017.
“Since I had no gun, I went to Port Harcourt where I met one guy called Solid. He had an Ak-47 rifle and we used it to snatch a vehicle. Without informing me, Solid took the vehicle and sold it. This made me to seize his gun.”
In a chat with newsmen, School Boy’s deputy gang leader, Michael Ahamefuna, who is married with two kids, said: “ I reside in Port Harcourt and I am from Abia State. I am a trader and I met School-Boy in at a smoking joint where we abused drugs. He used to take drugs there.
“He had an injury in his leg then but he took me to his village where we met one KC. We formed a kidnapping gang and kidnapped a man who paid us N1.5million. We went for another operation that fetched us N15million. We also picked someone in Owerri and took the person to Item in Abia State and got N10million from two victims. The last one that got us into trouble occurred in October 2018 and we lost our leader in that operation.” (The Nation)
