The Rivers State Police Command says that in different parts of the state, 10 people who were thought to be members of the now-defunct Indigenous People of Biafra and 7 people who were made up to be members of the Joint Taskforce have been arrested.
On Friday, Okon Effiong, the state’s police commissioner, gave a briefing to reporters in Port Harcourt. He told them about this.
According to Effiong, the arrests were made after the command acted on reliable intelligence and officers stormed the suspects’ hiding places.
He said that although the phoney civilian JTF members were apprehended in Omoku and Ahoada, both in Rivers State, the suspected IPOB members were detained at Oyigbo, on the outskirts of Port Harcourt.
On December 23, 2022, we learned that some IPOB members had begun moving to Rivers State, as the CP stated.
We had to work with that information, and we were able to find out where they reside at an estate in Oyigbo. Ten of them were detained during a raid on the estate where they were staying.
It’s interesting that four of those detained were named as the main perpetrators of the Oyigbo Police Station fire during the #EndSARS riot.
And since February of this year, one of them has been on the police’s wanted list.
“We are still working on them,” he continued, “and when we obtain information, we will act on it right away.”
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When the bogus civilian JTF was apprehended, CP Effiong revealed that they had travelled to the North-East for training in the use of weapons and had come to Rivers to recruit new members.
“We simply need to use extreme caution and tact,” he remarked. It was learned that certain people were receiving instruction in handling weapons.
“And we found out that the people who had been to Port Harcourt for the alleged training had come from the North-East to recruit people. They also claimed to be a civilian JTF.
When their camp was finally looked at, about four AK-47s made locally and some bullets were found.
“What’s interesting is that we found a lot of camouflage uniforms.” If anyone saw them, they would assume that they were police officers. Our inquiry led us to the conclusion that they had already entered Ahoada and Omoku’s cells.
“We went to Omoku, searched those cells, and took seven of them into custody.”
Effiong asked the public for help and promised that the command would keep the state safe from criminals in exchange for information that would help the police catch criminals.
