Five suspected kidnappers were on Tuesday arrested when a combined team of security agencies stormed and some forests in Ekiti State.
Police said it the move was in a bid to flush out criminal elements, especially kidnappers out of the state.
Police Public Relations Officer in Ekiti, DSP Abutu Sunday in a statement on Tuesday disclosed that the team was composed of the Police, NSCDC, Amotekun, members of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and local hunters.
DSP Sunday noted that the combined team embarked on a bush combing operation through Oke-Osun, Ikere/Igbo-Okah to the thick forest around Iju/Ikere boundary.
“During the Operation, five suspected kidnappers namely- Usman Jelili, Mohammed Bande, Abubakar Aliu, Isah Abdulahi and Suleiman Abdulahi were arrested,” the police spokesman said.
He stressed that the suspects claimed to be herdsmen during interrogation but it was later discovered that none of them had a cattle and no cattle was found with them in the forest where they were arrested.
The police listed items recovered from the suspects to include two motorcycles, one cutlass, one jack knife/dagger and four phones.
Crux News recalls that gunmen on Monday shot dead two traditional rulers in the state on their way from a security meeting.
The killings followed earlier abduction of students of a private school and their teachers a week earlier.
While commiserating with the communities, families and the government of Ekiti State on Tuesday, President Bola Tinubu ordered security agents to fish out perpetrators of the murders and rescue the kidnapped persons.
