Hyacinth Chinweuba
A heartless armed robbery suspect,Kunle Akerele aka kunlePoly has narrated why his gang used to cut off victims fingers or wrists.
Kunle, who was arrested by the Inspector – General of Police (IGP), Intelligence Response Team (IRT) led by Abba Kyari, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, also confessed that his gang inflicted serious machete injuries on victims. Kunle who claimed that he was the gang leader of the gang while speaking with Journalists at the Command Headquarters, Ikeja, alongside five of his gang members said,
”I am the leader of a six-man gang. We were operating at Agege, Aburo areas of Iyana Ipaja and Abule – Egba axis.
We specialised on house-to-house raiding. We were not wicked when we started, but the people made us become callous. Victims were always deceiving us that they had no money at home. We understand the cashless economy. But our anger was that when we knocked at our victims’ doors. They would hide their expensive phones and kept the less expensive ones so that when we request for their phones they would give us the less expensive ones. One day, my second in command suggested that we should start teaching our victims the lessons of their lives by inflicting wounds in their hands so that others would learn from it”.
“We bought sharp cutlasses which we used in severing the hands of stubborn victims. On January 13, we raided Aboru community because we were broke. We were surprised that each house we entered, they would present small Nokia phones as if they planned it” Kunle continued.
“We were surprised when we entered the house of a rich man who parked exotic cars in front of his compound. We requested for phones, he gave us small phones. We saw the expensive wedding ring in his finger. But he was behaving as if it was too difficult for him to remove it from his fingers. My second in command Tunde said we should hold him and he cut off his three fingers and removed the ring.
“Immediately the wife saw what happened, she quickly removed hers and gave it to us. When we saw how the game worked out well for us, we went back to other victims that gave us small phones and inflicted them with the machete cuts in their hands, fingers or wrist and we continued the raid in other houses. Those who gave us big phones, laptops were spared. We cut off the hands and wrists of over 20 persons on that fateful day.
“We did it for future purposes, so that the news of how merciless we were would spread so that when we come next time, people will bring out their money. How could it be said that people no longer use expensive phones. Those who dared us regretted their actions while those who were honest were happy they surrendered their phones. We bought our guns from Tunde who we settled each time we went for operations. Tunde bought the guns from a member of a local vigilante outfit.
I don’t know the arrangement between the man and Tunde. We thought that the guns were expensive, but we later discovered that he bought them for N20, 000 each “.
Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Zubairu Muazu, who ordered the arrest, said that the police received information from members of the public on the activities of the gang.
Muazu said that based on the information, detectives from IRT led by CSP. Philip Rieninwa and those from the State Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) led by CSP Peter Gana moved in and arrested the receiver of the gang’s stolen goods.
He said that it was the receiver who took the police to arrest members of the syndicate.
“Over 85 phones and 33 Laptops were recovered from the receiver of the stolen items. The case would be charged to court at the end of investigation,” he added.