Shocking confession: I police in the day and rob at night – Anti-robbery policeman
In a series of shocking revelations, an armed robbery suspect, Chris
Oboko, a corporal attached to the C4I unit of the Nigeria Police in
Rivers State, has told investigators how an informant “lured” him into a
gang of car snatchers.
Thirty five-year-old Oboko, who has now been dismissed from the
force, was recently arrested in Port Harcourt, during a mop-up of
criminal elements responsible for incessant robberies and carjacking in
the state by the Inspector-General of Police Special Intelligence
Response Team.
For him, the lure of armed robbery loot was something he could not simply resist.
According to him, the turning point for him was when he encountered
two members of a robbery and kidnapping gang, who were in the process of
selling the cars they got from one of their victims.
Investigators in the case said Oboko’s arrest seems to validate the
shade of opinion that ‘bad eggs’ in the force are responsible for the
bad conduct of some policemen.
Oboko, who joined the force in 2003 said he was living at the police
barracks on Iche Street, Borokiri, Port Harcourt, while ‘moonlighting’
as a robber.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that he first served at the Boroki
Police Division, before being transferred to the Special Anti-Robbery
Squad. He told journalists that he became a member of the C4I unit after
that.
But in 2015, Oboko decided to join the ranks of the men of the underworld whom he had sworn to protect the society against.
He said in his statement, “In 2015, I met Johnpaul Amandi, one of our
informants when he took two vehicles he stole from one of his
kidnapping victims to one Victor Nwogu to sell. I met them while they
were negotiating the price and I told them I would join their operation.
“After I became a member, I always found a way to get the members of
the gang released whenever they were arrested by the police. I am even
the resident Pastor of Battle Axe Assembly Church at Chuba Allo in Port
Harcourt. I know this business is evil and shouldn’t have joined but I
could not resist the temptation.”
Oboko, who chronicled his crime spree with the gang, admitted that he
led three other members of the gang to snatch a Toyota Camry at D-line
area of Port Harcourt few months ago, which his gang sold for N200,000.
Out of the proceeds, he said he got N70,000.
The suspect said on their second operation, three of them stole three
Toyota Camry cars from the D-line motor park in Port Harcourt in a
single day.
He said, “Victor Nwogu in Owerri is the one that helped sell off the
vehicles. He gave us N360, 000 after selling the cars and I got N150,
000 as my share. I remember that we also snatched a Toyota Corolla from
Elelanwo area of Port Harcourt.
“I pointed a gun at the driver and he ran out of his vehicle. We sold
that one for N250,000 out of which I got a share of N80,000. There was a
Toyota Spider we also snatched at gunpoint around GRA in Port Harcourt.
We hid it somewhere at Borokiri Sand Field. But before we arrived
there in the morning, the car had been removed.”
Through the confessions of other members of the gang, Saturday PUNCH learnt
that Oboko was also the armourer of his gang. Apart from that, he
allegedly used his police identity to give the members of the gang safe
passage anytime they stole or snatched a vehicle.
A police source disclosed that in one of the robbery cases that Oboko
investigated as a policeman, he took two pistols away from the suspect,
and rather than file them as exhibits, he converted the guns to the use
of his gang.
He was also said to have perfected the process of producing fake
vehicle documents for each vehicle that his gang members snatched.
Apart from this, each time they snatched or stole a vehicle, the
suspect would alter the vehicle engine and chassis numbers before
transporting it to the buyer,” the source said.
The arrest of Oboko came after weeks of tracking by IRT operatives,
following information given by Amandi who had earlier been apprehended.
Twenty-seven-year-old Amandi, a Bayelsa State indigene, said he was a
commercial bus driver before he ventured into armed robbery
specialising in car snatching.
He said his gang was so good at snatching and stealing cars that on
one single night, his second operation after joining the robbery gang,
they got five cars.
Explaining how he met Oboko, he said, “Two friends of mine kidnapped a
former local government chairman in Bayelsa State and brought two cars
taken from the man to me to sell in Port Harcourt. When I was checking
the cars in Nembe Waterside, Corporal Oboko and one of his colleagues
confronted us and took the cars away from us. Instead of taking the
vehicles to their station, they made it theirs.
“Three months after that, he saw me on the road and asked me to
forgive him and said that he would like me to work with him. He took me
to his boss at C4I and he told him that I was highly resourceful and I
could become an informant giving the police information about armed
robbers in the state.
“His boss told me that if I could assist with information, I would be
rewarded well and I accepted. I even gave them information that led to
the arrest of big armed robbers in Port Harcourt from whom they
recovered arms and ammunition.
“After one month of being an informant, Corporal Oboko said one of
the cars he took from me was giving him trouble and he needed another
car. He said he needed a brand new car. I told him that I had stopped
stealing cars since I had started working with the car snatching gang,
but he insisted. He then said I should not worry and said that he would
follow me to wherever I wanted to steal the car.
“On our first outing together, we stole a Honda ‘End of Discussion’.
He gave his father the first car and started using the new one. He then
encouraged that we should go for more robberies because he had seen how
easy the first operation was. He also arranged with Victor in Owerri,
who received and sold the vehicles for us.”
Amandi said he did many operations in the night with Oboko but that
whenever he was arrested, the policeman always came to his rescue by
simply telling whoever had arrested him that he was an informant working
for the C4I.
But it seemed car snatching in the night was not enough for Oboko.
Amadi said he told him one day that he was tired of operating in the
dead of the night and said they needed to graduate to car snatching at
gunpoint in broad daylight.
He said, “I thought Corporal Oboko was joking but few days after, he
brought two pistols to me. He said he bought the guns. We snatched many
cars around Port Harcourt, but even though we used to share the
proceeds equally in the past, it got to a time that he started to cheat
me.
“He would sometimes refuse to give me my own share and sometimes, he
would not involve me in an operation. He started bypassing me to work
with other boys I introduced to him. Not long after that, I was
arrested and told the police about him.”
The police have said efforts are on to arrest other members of the gang, while Oboko would be charged with armed robbery soon.
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