The Imo State Commissioner of Police, Aboki Danjuma, has increased police presence in the Owerri West Local Government Area of the state.
This is to curb the upsurge in violent crimes like kidnappings, rape, and murder in a forest spanning across the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nekede, Ihiagwa, Avu, and Obinze communities, all in the Owerri West LGA.
On January 24, 2024, the command said its operatives rescued the immediate past chairman of the Imo State Council of Traditional Rulers, Samuel Ohiri, from the kidnappers’ den after spending about three weeks there.
Abduction is one of the most prominent vices in the state and other parts of the country.
Similarly, in December 2023, those who abducted the parish priest of St. Michael’s Catholic Church Umuekebi in the Osuowerre autonomous community in the Isiala Mbano Local Government Area of the state, Rev. Fr. Kingsley Eze, also known as Father Ichie, together with his driver, Uchennna Newman, demanded N10m in ransom.
A statement issued by the spokesman for the police in the state, Henry Okoye, in Owerri, the state capital, on Friday, disclosed that the CP’s action was propelled by the recent discovery of three decomposed corpses in the forest, believed to be victims of kidnapping.
A few days ago, the CP led his men into the forest, exhumed three bodies of kidnapping victims, and arrested five suspects who hail from the northern states of the country.
The forest had been serving as a den for suspected Fulani herdsmen kidnappers who had been terrorising the Owerri-Port Harcourt expressway axis of the state.
Meanwhile, many kidnapped victims and their relatives had severally accused Fulani herdsmen of addicting them or their relatives in that axis.
