Ex soldier, others nabbed for diverting goods from owners

Date: 22-12-2012 5:45 pm (11 years ago) | Author: Direct
- at 22-12-2012 05:45 PM (11 years ago)
(m)
Sunny Ozor was a private in the Nigerian Army assigned to the Ojo Military Cantonment in Lagos until he ran into trouble with the military authorities in 2010.

CRIME DIGEST learnt that Ozor was dismissed from the Army after he allegedly served as an escort to some dealers in stolen goods.

“I was approached by two men named Timothy and Emeka.  At the time, I didn’t know they were robbers. They told me they needed my services to escort a truckload of goods somewhere. We agreed on a price and I went along with their plan,” he said.

Unknown to him, the goods were being diverted from their actual destination to a receiver of stolen goods. Sometime later, the bubble burst and Ozor was arrested by the police alongside Timothy and Emeka, charged to court for theft and jailed.

Two years after he regained freedom, Ozor is once again in the eye of the storm for allegedly diverting another truckload of goods. He was arrested alongside three others, Amechi Nnome, Bayo Gani and Taured Ayinla, aka Alfa.

Evidently, the ex-soldier had learnt no lesson from the first jail term. He wasted no time in returning to the same crime that had cost him his job.

Ozor claimed that he was introduced to Amechi Nnome, a conductor who had been co-opted into diversion by Timothy and Emeka. And with the help of Ayinla, the three men had embarked on a series of diversion operations.

 “I served time in the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in 2010 for theft. It was there I met Emeka, who introduced me to diversion. After I left prison, I met Ozor and we began to work together. We would dress up as soldiers and trail any truck of our choice from Apapa Wharf. We would drive close to the truck and intentionally brush its side with our vehicle. Then we would feign annoyance and block its path. We would claim that the truck had hit our car.

“Since the driver would assume that we were soldiers, naturally he would plead and beg. We have previously diverted truckloads of PVC pipes, industrial chemicals, wine and groundnut oil. All this we handed over to Ayinla to get buyers for us and then pay us off,” Nnome told CRIME DIGEST, recounting how the gang operated.

However, the gang would proceed to ‘arrest’ the driver of the truck, while one of their members would drive off in the vehicle to a pre-arranged rendezvous, where the goods would be unloaded.

The truck driver and his boys would then be abandoned far away from the scene of their ‘arrest.’

However, Ayinla, who works with a popular cement company, denied the allegations.

He said, “I don’t have the money to buy the kind of goods they bring. All I do is find buyers for the goods and pay them off. I am not a robber and had no idea that the goods were stolen. I admit that I received stolen goods from robbers in the past, but I stopped all that last year. I have been living straight ever since.  This truckload of tin plates in particular was brought to me in 2010. It wasn’t stolen this year.”

In another incident, three men were arrested by a team of policemen from the Special Anti-Robbery Squad for breaking into a shop on Kirikiri Road, Apapa, and stealing 25 sets of generators.

Also, the suspects, Onyebuchi Anyaeze, Ibrahim Mohammed and Kelechi Ikeanyi, were said to have been stealing from the containers at Apapa Wharf.

Anyaeze told CRIME DIGEST that he worked as a labourer at Apapa Wharf in 2004. He said, “It was back then I met Peter, another labourer. He taught me how to break into containers at the wharf and steal from them.”

In his reaction, the police chief in Lagos, Umaru Manko, said Ayinla had been on the wanted list of the police for some years.

Manko said, “Sometime in 2010, a trailer load of tin plates, about 300 pieces, was diverted from Amuwo Odofin. It was heading for Benin City. Ozor and his group would sometimes monitor goods from Tin Can and trail them. They are able to discover the contents of the numerous containers at the wharf when customers check their goods at the exit of the wharf. After the goods was diverted and stolen, a complaint was lodged at the Special Anti Robbery Squad in Ikeja.

“The investigative SARS team was able to track down Ayinla, who had been elusive for years. Over the past two years, each time the hijackers of stolen goods were interrogated, they fingered Ayinla as the receiver of all their goods. He was finally tracked and arrested at his Ota, Ogun State home, through one of his employees, Samuel Igwe.

“It was Ayinla who sponsored the activities of Ozor and his group. He provided a bus with which the group moved around with and also owned a warehouse in Ogun State where the stolen goods are hidden before a buyer is found.

“It has become a trend for many robbers to steal goods either from containers in the wharf or as they leave the wharf to their final destinations. Anyaeze and Mohammed had previously worked as labourers at Apapa Wharf. They used their knowledge of the wharf and its environs to gain access at will to the containers within and with the aid of cutters, steal goods stored in the containers. Ikeanyi, on his part, owns an office at Suru-Alaba and under the guise of being an importer/exporter, has been a receiver for Anyaeze and his group.”

Posted: at 22-12-2012 05:45 PM (11 years ago) | Hero
- Rihannaaa at 22-12-2012 05:48 PM (11 years ago)
(f)
I C

Posted: at 22-12-2012 05:48 PM (11 years ago) | Gistmaniac
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- winace at 23-12-2012 05:28 AM (11 years ago)
(f)
D exconvict dat are free , how did they empower them cus if they do, most of them won't go bak to crime.
Posted: at 23-12-2012 05:28 AM (11 years ago) | Addicted Hero
Reply
- Unikpearl at 23-12-2012 06:25 AM (11 years ago)
(f)
Application of theories of punishment
Posted: at 23-12-2012 06:25 AM (11 years ago) | Gistmaniac
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