Posted by By Oluwole Adeboye & Ekene Obidike on
Two fake cross-border soldiers have been arrested by the police in Lagos.
Two fake cross-border soldiers have been arrested by the police in Lagos.
The suspects identified as Okechukwu Eze, 27, and Afolabi Ogunyemi, 24, allegedly provide security for smugglers so as to beat policemen at checkpoints.
The suspects told P.M.News how they operated before they were arrested.
According to Afolabi Ogunyemi, 'we are not armed robbers but we are fake soldiers. I bought the uniform from somebody for N5,000 and I will lead the police to the man if they so wish. You can see that we don't make use of riffles. It is usually a gentle man deal.
'We would strike a deal with those who buy goods from Republic of Benin and we will promise them that we can protect them to their destination and seeing us in uniforms, they won't doubt us and we have been doing this for a very long time, since we have got no job and I think this is better than using gun to kill people.
'Surprisingly, we cannot boast of any tangible thing that we have done with the money that we got from the deal."
Okechukwu Eze said: 'I got the uniform from my father who is an ex-soldier."
Parading the suspects yesterday, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police who is now elevated to the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Mr. Audu Abubakar, said: 'look at these fake soldiers, real soldiers don't dress like this."