The Ogun State Police Command, on Tuesday, said it had arrested four suspected members of the robbery gang that attacked Ekene Dili Chukwu luxury bus which was conveying 42 female secondary school students to Lagos from Enugu, last Saturday, at the Oke-Odo end of Sagamu-Benin Expressway in Ijebu-East Local Government Area of the state.
Confirming the arrest, the spokesman for the Ogun State Police Command, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, said: “The Ogun State Police Command has arrested the driver of the luxury bus that conveyed the Enugu students who were attacked by some hoodlums at Ogbere along the ever busy Ijebu/Benin expressway at 11.40p.m on Saturday, 31/3/2012 and four others who have been suspected to have carried out the operation.
“The other suspects arrested are Oni Olopari, Innocent Omule, Gbenga Adebayo and Samuel Luca. Driver of the bus has identified Samuel Luca as one of those who attacked them that night.
“In the same vein, the command was able to recover some items in the suspects’ houses at Ijebu Ife and Ijebu Imushin, including some plastic chairs contained in a broken down vehicle at the scene of the robbery, the recovery of these chairs assisted the police to focus more on the suspects who were raided in their hideout at Ijebu Imushin after a tip off. The command is still intensifying efforts to arrest the fleeing members of the gang.”
During investigation, one of the suspects, Lucas, was discovered to have been residing in a military barracks in Ilese area of the state before he was ejected for an undisclosed offence.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Vanguard newspaper, the transport company’s General Manager, Charles Obiora dismissed as baseless and unfounded rumours that some students were gang-raped by the hoodlums who hijacked the bus, challenging any parents to show evidence of such from a government certified medical report.
“I can tell you that nobody was raped and I challenge any parent who said his or her daughter was raped to come up with a medical report from a government hospital to that effect,” he said.
