The Oyo State Government on Monday, levelled a three-bedroom bungalow in Ibadan’s Lako Community. The owners? A kidnapping gang that picked the wrong target. Police say the house along Aiyegun-Anaye Road served as planning base for the June 3 abduction of former power minister, Chief Adebayo Adelabu’s younger sister and her 12-year-old twins.
The victims, rescued on Staurday are safe now while two kidnappers were shot dead. According to government officials and police personnel, the move is part of ongoing efforts to curb kidnapping and other criminal activities across the state.
Oyo’s public works ministry teamed up with police to pull it down. The message: use your house for crime, lose your house. Earlier on Sunday, the Oyo State Commissioner of Police, Abimbola Olugbenga, led journalists and security personnel to the building, announcing that preliminary investigations showed that the kidnappers had repeatedly used the location as a hideout.
He said: “After the incident on the third of this month, we deployed technical and intelligence resources and followed up on the information we received, which resulted in this operation. So it was purely through intelligence.”
Olugbenga added that “there have been bringing the abductees here. They bring them here, people see them, even people greet them welcome sometimes”
“When people see them and don’t talk, what do you want us to do? If they had been reporting suspicious events like this, none of these would have happened. We would have taken necessary steps on time.”
He lamented that neighbours have refused to make a report early enough about criminal activities going on in the building: “Obviously, if you see something, say something. If they had done that, maybe we would have been able to arrest them before now,”
