Like the kidnap kingpin, Chukwudumeje Onwuamadike, aka Evans, who employed more than a few decoys to cover his tracks weeks before his arrest by the Police, killer-herdsmen supposedly terrorizing villagers Ovre-Abraka, Ossissa and other communities in Delta State have contrived different ways of eluding security operatives searching for them.
Herdsmen…
NDV learned that the killer-herdsmen largely dominated by fleeing terrorists from the northern part of the country had sent the fear of the devil into local herdsmen in the state that nobody would want to disclose their activities and whereabouts to the Police for fear of being identified and killed.
Commissioner of Police, Delta State, Mr. Zanna Ibrahim, who spoke to reporters, weekend, however, declined to disclose, according to him, “for security reasons”, his findings at the Abraka ‘Sambisa forest’.
He stated: “We cannot divulge that kind of information, which is why we call it intelligence. It is privileged information. By the time I tell you that this is the information I have from Emma Amaize, I will be exposing him, is that not so. So, we try to keep in confidence the sources of our information and what we want to do.”
Similarly, a seven-man team from the office of the Inspector General of Police, IGP, sent to Abraka, over a fortnight ago, on the orders of the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo to investigate the activities of armed Fulani herdsmen in the area, fastened its discoveries.
Herdsmen go into hiding - Informant
An informed source told NDV: “Most of the herdsmen carrying out these activities are from the north like us, but we do not know them, sometimes, they come without invitation to the Hausa and Fulani communities in the state and there is nothing we can do about them because they are deadly people.
“I call you that they are resident in Abraka and environs, we do not even know their real mission, they move from one place to the other, wrecking all kinds of havoc and people think we are the ones. Shortly before the Police deployed men to Abraka, they went into hiding because we have not been seeing them anymore and some of the friends they also move about with have also disappeared. They are really endangering our stay with our host communities.”
Re-position after operations
Findings showed that the destroyer-herdsmen, who function as kidnappers, mercenaries, robbers and rapists used fake names and have no fixed addresses in the state and once after their operations in a community, they quickly relocate to another part of the state to cover their tracks.
2 suspected arms suppliers nabbed - Commissioner of Police
A source said they get their arms from a syndicate, which the police have arrested some of the kingpins. One of them, Musa Mohammed, aka Musa 1000, described by the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Ibrahim, as a “notorious kidnap kingpin/illegal arms dealer/supplier of arms and ammunition to kidnap syndicates” was arrested on June 1.
Commissioner Ibrahim asserted: “Musa Mohammed, aka Musa 1000, 56 years, a native of Dutsinma town in Katsina, is resident in Cable point area Asaba. On June 1, 2017 at about 1645hrs, the suspect who has been on the command’s watch list, having complicity in most kidnappings related to supply of arms and ammunitions to herdsmen and kidnapping syndicates, but has been on the run was arrested by combined team of SAKCCS operatives and Eagle Vigilante group Abraka market Asaba.”
The commissioner disclosed that a day after Mohammed’s arrest, detectives of the Special Anti-Kidnapping and Cyber-Crime Squad, SAKCCS, Asaba, in conjunction with the Eagle Vigilante groups of Abraka Market, Asaba, seized an ally of Musa 1000, a 45-year old national of Niger Republic, Sa’adu Alhaji, resident at Okpanam road, Asaba, over his complicity in most kidnap cases connected to the kidnapping syndicates by suspected herdsmen.
Roaming herdsmen behind attacks, killings
On the hunt for herdsmen, he stated: “Delta Police Command is aware that it is not the sedentary herdsmen that are staying with us that are causing the problems but the ones that migrate from one place to the other, they are criminal elements among them that come to create this problem.”
His words: “Yes, that is true, we have deployed 131 policemen made up of special forces, that is PMF, counter terrorism unit, general duty policemen and SIB, that is the intelligence branch of the police because we believe that in order checkmate the excesses of herdsmen, it has to be a holistic approach. Our men are on the ground, they are sniffing for information and as soon as they are credible enough and doable, we will work on them."
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