The Police, on Wednesday, June 24, paraded some suspected arms dealers and armed robbers at the Special Anti-Robbery Squad office in Abuja.

DCP Frank Mba, Police Public Relations Officer, while speaking at the event said 39 suspects, including 3 females were arrested.

The female suspects, Preye Jimmy, 30, Eleana Yowei, 25, and Favour Bello were arrested for allegedly conspiring with the kingpin, who is also the husband of Yowei, to transport ammunition concealed in a half bag of rice from Kano to Bayelsa.

The spokesman said the suspects were clearly empirically linked with offences ranging from kidnapping, armed robbery, cattle rustling, and gunrunning.

He said the suspects were arrested for a failed attempt to move a total of 818 rands of live ammunitions, of which 718 was meant for a general-purpose machine gun, from Kano to Yenogoa, Bayelsa State. 

However, the female suspects claimed that they were not aware that the consignment was an unlawful one (ammunitions).

Eleana, while confessing to the force, said her husband, on May 28, 2020, instructed her to send the consignment through favour, who was planning to travel to Bayelsa, to him.

“On arrival to Bayelsa, Favour will hand it over to her mother, Preye Jimmy, an arrangement has been made, and she would know what to do after collecting the bag of rice” Eleana quoted her husband.

Distressed Eleana, said she was arrested after favour was apprehended at the Bus park, while she was about transporting the consignment from Kano to Bayelsa.

Eleana added her trust for husband made her ignored checking the content of the consignment, hereby advising the general public to check for details before helping in the transporting of consignments.

According to the Force spokesman, one of suspect specialized in hijacking vehicles from drivers after drugging them.  

Frank Mba said the arrest was made based on human intelligence reports by operatives of the force leaving in the same environment with the suspects.

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The Force spokesman revealed that the ammunition recovered from the suspects is capable of causing massive havoc to any community.

Some of the ammunition recovered were: 7 AK 47 riffles, 3 pump actions alongside the Nigerian Military camouflages uniform.

Frank Mba noted that the usage of the military’s camouflage has become rampant among criminals to carry out their unlawful act in pretext to be military men. 

He reiterated that the force will continue to work with other sister agencies as well as the military counterpart to ensure that the flow is curbed, adding that operational steps will be taken to ensure that the criminals do not have access to the uniforms.

Frank Mba said the kingpin, had been arrested and detained by the Nigerian military.

He hereby advised the general public to desist from unlawful activities that could impede their freedom and make them be on the force trail, adding that “good things take time.”