‘I thank God that the Police arrested me’ – Armed Robbery Suspect

A suspected armed robber, Sunday Onu, has said that he thanked God over his arrest, as he had tried several times to quit armed robbery but failed.

The suspect who hailed from Benue state claimed that he joined the armed robbery gang a week after his traditional wed­ding.

He noted that his arrest was divinely arranged as he had sev­erally attempted to quit the evil act but could not.

Onu who is now 34 year old, revealed that his four man armed robbery gang always disguised as NEPA officials in their overalls, knock at the gate of their victims for engineering services only to hold the house hostage at gun point and rob them.

The suspect who claimed to be the driver of the armed rob­bery gang disclosed that his own share at the end of every opera­tion ranges between N450,000 to 500,000 depending on how much the group made during the operation.

“I joined the gang after my traditional wedding in 2013 and since then we have been working together and each time I wanted to quit something tends to stop me.

“I was the driver of the gang and also use my own car to carry them to any place they want to go for operation, but I don’t fol­low them for the operation. My duty was to drop them and go out of the operation zone to wait and after operation they called me and I quickly rushed to take them away.

“During the first operation I received the sum of N450,000, I am aware the use guns but we don’t kill,” he explained.

However, luck ran out of him after a resident of one of their victims sent a distress call to the police which swiftly responded and rounded him and one other suspect up while their leaders es­caped

Federal government frustrated my efforts to free Chibok girls trice – Boko Haram close pal, Salkida

Freelance journalist, Ahmad Salkida, has revealed that several attempts made by him to free the abducted Chibok girls from captivity had been frustrated by the federal government.

Salkida, who is believed to have direct links to Boko Haram terrorists, said he met the girls and their captors at the instance of the federal government.

In an email to Daily Trust on Sunday, Salkida faulted the narratives of the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed and President Muhammadu Buhari’s biographer,Professor John Paden, on why the rescue of the Chibok girls is yet to be actualised.

“At least, today, I am probably the only one who has gone to location of swaps with detainees and I set my eyes on the girls in their early days in captivity, under a presidential cover to negotiate,” he said.

Salkida, who had been in the United Arab Emirates on self-exile since 2013, recently returned to Nigeria after he, with two others were declared wanted by the Nigerian Army for having “links” with the Boko Haram and not divulging certain information.

Salkida said it was not true that the leadership of Boko Haram demanded 5 billion Euros (roughly N1.7 trillion) as ransom for the release of the abducted girls as stated by Paden in his book “Muhammadu Buhari: The challenge of leadership in Nigeria”.

According to him, “I’m not sure I understand why our leaders choose to declassify important aspects of this negotiation when the girls are still in captivity, but I can categorically say that the claim of a demand of 5 billion Euros as published by President Buhari’s biographer is not the truth.

“While it is true that the captors of the Chibok girls have shifted the goal post several times when a swap deal was near, we must ask ourselves, what was responsible for the volatility that has denied the rest of the surviving Chibok girls and other captives’ freedom?

“How did I know this and write with such audacity? I was the only negotiator that was flown to Maiduguri with some detainees in an Air Force plane and I stayed in the Maimalari military barracks for over three weeks with the detainees, trying to reach a deal.

“From my professional experience with both parties namely government authorities and the insurgents, I can state that these abducted girls would long have returned home if political and security officials in government had shown better understanding of what is at play.

“Never, even from the days of former President Goodluck Jonathan to today’s dispensation has government accepted a window of say two, three weeks and abided by it. So, we are dealing with insurgents who do not recognize your bureaucratic heritage and continue to shut out the windows each time the indicated timelines elapsed, and also dealing with political and security authorities that never considered it expedient to do their housekeeping ahead of acceptance of negotiation windows that are tied to timelines.

“There is no point to delve into much detail at this point, but suffice it to state that both sides have their share of blame. My experience is that both the Buhari led government and the preceding Jonathan administration desired a negotiated end to this imbroglio but none ever showed any hunger in tracking the footprints and understanding the tendencies of the enemy.

“I was not only involved in one or two attempts to free the Chibok girls with the current government, but on three separate occasions and even as recently as May/June, 2016, few months before I was declared wanted for allegedly refusing to cooperate with the same government and for having “links to terrorism” by the Nigerian Army,” Salkida said.

SOURCE: Dailypostng