The Adamawa State Police Command has nabbed 40 youths suspected to be members of the notorious Shilla Boys, who usually terrorise the state capital, Yola, dispossessing residents of valuables.
The state Commissioner of Police, CP Audu Madaki, who paraded the boys on Monday at the police headquarters in Jimeta, said the police would henceforth treat the boys as armed robbers and charge them to court accordingly.
He explained that the boys, who usually rob their victims using knives, machetes and scissors to scare them to submission or injure unyielding ones, could legally be prosecuted as armed robbers.
He said the 40 boys were rounded up around Jimeta in Yola North Local Government Area and Yola in Yola South LGA, being where the boys frequently operate, within the last three weeks.
The police command had in its last press briefing three weeks ago, paraded 65 Shilla Boys. The command had on a much earlier occasion nabbed a much higher number of the group: 173.
CP Audu Madaki said his command arrived at the decision to treat the Shilla Boys as armed robbers so that the process of law at the courts would take a more deterrent course.
The CP spoke against the background of a situation whereby the boys are charged to court by the police under such charge as criminal conspiracy and public nuisance only for them to be allowed back almost immediately into the society where they promptly resume their criminal activities.
In the course of the Monday afternoon press briefing, the Commissioner of Police also announced the names of five people who he said denounced “their criminal tendencies and repented from kidnapping.”
He named the five, all of them from Song LGA, as Mohammed Rabiu, Raboji Isa, Jalon Iliya, Babawuro Alhaji Lamdo, and TukurAlhaji Lamdo.
He said the five repentant kidnappers surrendered five AK47 guns and 334 rounds of live ammunition and vowed to assist both the police and the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) to identify and “recover more people in order to keep Adamawa State free from crime.”
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