Ondo Amotekun arrests 80 suspected criminals

The Ondo State Security Network Agency, also known as Amotekun, has arrested no less than 80 people for alleged involvement in criminal activities in the state.

The force said the suspects have been arrested since the beginning of the year 2023.

Speaking about the development, state Corps commander Akogun Adetunji Adeleye said the suspects were arrested at various locations across the state’s 18 local government areas.

According to him, 32 of the suspects have been brought to court while investigations into some of the cases related to the suspects were ongoing.

Adeleye said: “80 criminals have been arrested in the past three weeks. In the last week about 32 have been taken to court for prosecution, investigations are ongoing in most of these and some of them ended up falling victim to circumstances such as those that come out without means of identification at odd hours and were found where they shouldn’t be.

“Those who were released after proper questioning to go, while some were released on bail.

“But what we have here is about 36 men and women engaged in various criminal activities ranging from murder to anti-grazing, stealing motorcycles, stealing grinders, stealing keke napep, stealing various household equipment, including generators, and armed robbery.

“The majority of them have completed the investigation and one of them will appear in court early next (this) week. Here’s what we’ve been able to put together over the past three weeks.

“A criminal is a criminal, wherever he comes from. We don’t want to give color to crime, a criminal is a criminal.

“Once you engage in criminal activity, the signal we send is that Ondo State is a place where you cannot thrive as a criminal. The criminals had better leave Ondo State, not only in the city, but also in the forest.

“Some of these criminals were arrested in the middle of the forest. Again, the anti-open grazing law is in effect in Ondo State, where we have discouraged the use of minors for grazing, especially when they engage in the destruction of agricultural produce.

“Some of them were engaged in very massive destruction. We arrested some of those involved in the destruction of one of PDP’s top officers who went viral saying his farm was destroyed. We caught them and we took them to book.

Adeleye added: “In the last two weeks we have seen an increase in the number of missing people in the city. And our discreet research shows that most of these people are boarding Okada who are not registered with SITA and not registered with the okada association, not even their bikes are registered at all.

“So it becomes very difficult to identify them and the majority of the victims who manage to escape that we interrogate afterwards tell us that those kidnappers put on hoods and put on helmets.”

Amotekun’s boss noted that the arrests were successful after cooperating with other security agencies.