By Desire Emmanuel
Eight members of a robbery syndicate have been arrested by men of the Ogun State Police Command after they stole a trailer belonging to Dangote Cement carrying 900 bags of the product.
In fact, they had already taken some of the stolen bags of cement to a warehouse before the long arm of the law caught up with them.
The names of those arrested were given as Mogaji Sodiq, Lekan Adebowale, Peter Ajah, Ganiyu Razaq, Ayoola Odeleye, Amos Egboja, Akeem Bello and Sunday Olaifa.
It was gathered that the syndicate specialised in attacking drivers and hijacking their trailers along the Papalanto and Owode-Idiroko axis of the state.
Nemesis caught up with them when they stole a Dangote Cement trailer from the driver, drove it to a location and offloaded some of the 900 bags inside the trailer to a warehouse before they were arrested.
The driver of the trailer was said to have made a distress call after he was dispossessed of the trailer which got to the attention of the authorities of the command.
After receiving the call, the Commissioner of Police directed operatives of the Anti-Robbery Squad, State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Eleweran, to deploy intelligence assets, intensify surveillance, and discreetly track and dismantle the criminal network.
This paid off when detectives located the warehouse and arrested those the command described as “key members of the gang.”
“It was further established during investigations that the syndicate had carried out previous criminal operations, with ongoing inquiries unveiling a pattern of organised theft targeting commercial supply chains. Intelligence is currently being exploited to track, locate, and apprehend other fleeing members while further investigations continue to dismantle their wider criminal network and identify accomplices and logistics channels,” the command said on Thursday.
Those arrested are expected to be charged to court at the conclusion of the investigation.
