Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Two persons, Ahmed Ibrahim, 58, and Saheed Makinde, 42, have been arrested with three guns that were found in their Toyota Corolla CE car on Saturday morning.
The men were arrested by operatives of Operation Burst, the joint security outfit of the Oyo State Government at a spot along Secretariat Road in Ibadan, the State capital.
The Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism in the state, Dr Wasiu Olatubosun, who addressed reporters on the arrest on Saturday at the premises of Operation Burst Headquarters at Agodi, Ibadan, said two pump action guns and one single barrel gun were recovered from the men.
‘The security operatives are working and the Government is ready to continue to protect the lives and property of the people,’ the Commissioner stated.
Further investigation revealed that the particulars of the car were genuine, and that the licence for one of the guns had expired. A document that was shown to reporters revealed that the last time the licence was renewed was 2017.
One of the suspects, Ibrahim, however, stated that he used the guns to protect the Mokola Divisional Police Headquarters from being razed by hoodlums, adding that he owns one of the guns and that he had a licence for it. But he did not know that men of the Oodu’a Peoples Congress (OPC) that were in the team, securing the Mokola police station, had put other guns in the car.
The car owner, Saheed Makinde, also said he did not know that the guns were in the car, otherwise, he would have told the owners to remove them before driving the car.
Olatubosun also showed a 24-year-old suspected burglar, Other Akinbode, who allegedly burgled a shop at Oba Ogundipe Market, Agodi, Ibadan.
The suspect was said to have been arrested on Saturday morning, though he claimed that he was just wandering around.
The owner of the shop that was purportedly broken into, Deji Adefeso, said he operates Point of Sale (POS) machines, and that N380,000 was stolen by burglars in his shop about three weeks ago, adding: ‘I was told that four of them came to burgle my shop, but three escaped and one of them was arrested.’