No fewer than 36 suspected criminals have been arrested by the Ondo State Security Network Agency, also known as Amotekun, for alleged involvement in criminal activities in some parts of the state.
Parading the suspects at the Amotekun headquarters in Akure, on Wednesday, the state corps commander, Akogun Adeleye, said 19 of the suspects were specifically arrested over alleged kidnapping activities, while others allegedly committed other offences such as stealing, burglary, and murder, among others.
According to him, the 19 suspected kidnappers were picked from the northern senatorial district of the state.
“You will notice that you always find members of the Amotekun Corps in every junction and every major street, and this is to prevent kidnappers from entering houses to pick people.
“Today again, we are parading about 36 suspects. I want to place it on record that in the last month, there were three kidnapped activities that we were able to file successfully. This means that in the last month, there have been no successful kidnapping activities in the state.
“Today, a cross-section of these criminals is different from what we normally have, where we parade 20 people and 15 of them are kidnapping suspects. Today, we have more housebreaking and stealing suspects, and we remain resolute in our determination to flush them out of our society.
“Some of the suspected kidnappers and robbers that we were able to find were due to our intelligence report, and we picked about 17 of them in a particular area in the state where we monitored.
“We equally have a suspected murderer; we have about eight cases of housebreaking and shops breaking.”
The Amotekun commander noted that the arrest was made possible with the assistance of other security agencies in the state.
“I must say that with the cooperation of other state security agencies, we have been able to reduce the criminal activities in the state. The cross-section of these 36 suspects shows that their activities have dropped drastically in the state. We will still continue to ensure that people do their businesses normally and that they are not disturbed. Now that the state government is resolute in guaranteeing lives and property, we are also determined to ensure that,” he stressed.
He, however, appealed to the traditional rulers in the state to give the corps any useful information that could assist the Amotekun to flush out the criminals from the state.
“We want to appeal to the Olus (traditional rulers) that once they see the connection between unknown people in the forest, they should alert us immediately. I want to encourage the general public that once they see strange movements, they should let the security agencies know,” he urged.
