- Police Fume Over Rising Kidnapping Rate, Attacks
Kazeem Badmus
A 19-year-old admission seeker, Ewaoluwa Oluwatofunmi, alongside 12 others were last Sunday, rescued by the officers of the Nigeria Police force, Osun Command and the hunters.
Oluwatofunmi, a resident of Ilesa, State of Osun, boarded a bus going to Ilesa at Ilesa garage, Osogbo and was abducted by gunmen who pretended to be passengers.
Narrating how the incident happened, Ewaoluwa, during an interview said she boarded a bus going to Ilesa at Ilesa Garage park, Osogbo around 1.30pm on Sunday.
Midway into the journey, Ewaoluwa said three out of five, all men passengers that sat at the back seat of the bus told the driver to stop the vehicle because they wanted to ease themselves.
She said, “Around 1:30 pm on Sunday, I went to Ilesa Garage in Osogbo to enter a bus going to Ilesa. When I got to the park, I met five men and some ladies inside the bus. We moved after the bus was filled, but on getting to a bushy area in-between Osogbo and Ilesa, three of the men sitting at the back seat told the driver to park for them to urinate.
“The driver obliged them and when they got down, they asked others inside the bus to also come down and urinate. But we told them we are mature enough to know if we wanted to urinate. Later, one of them lied to the driver that one of the bus tyres was deflated. The driver got down and the other people in the bus also went down.
“Few minutes before that would happen, I was on the phone with my father speaking and I didn’t end the call as I came down from the bus. As soon as we came down from the bus, the men brought out guns and asked us to move into the bush. We trekked for some minutes inside the bush until they stopped us and asked us to bring out whatever valuables we had on us.
“I submitted my big phone to the kidnappers but I kept the small phone I was using to speak with my parents in my pocket without ending the call, so they could hear we were in danger. We were doing that when suddenly, we heard the siren of the police and that scared the abductors who were heavily armed and spoke in pidgin English. They ran away and left us there.”
When contacted, the spokesman of state police Command, Yemisi Opalola, said, “Combined efforts of the police and hunters rescued the victims.”
Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police in the State, Olawale Olokode, has expressed anger over worsening activities of kidnappers and political thugs across the state.
Olokode, in a statement issued by the command’s PRO, Opalola, said he gave stern order to other top police heads in the state to intensify policing and restore order.
The statement reads, “consequent upon tide of attacks and counter attacks by individuals, political parties/supporters, transporters and act of thuggery after the governorship election in the state, the State Command is miffed with the trend by unscrupulous elements to disturb the peace of the State.
“In view of this, the Commissioner of Police, Osun State, CP Olawale Olokode, has re-engineered the security template in the state by giving actionable order to the Area Commanders, Divisional Police Officers and Tactical Commanders to embark on rigorous/intensive operations and intelligence led policing to ensure the public place are not taken over by the criminal minded individuals and group(s) thereby stemming the tide of this unwarranted trend.
“The CP, while giving the command’s security action plans to his lieutenants to tackle all forms of crimes in the state, admonished the political gladiators to play the game according to the rules.”
