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Kano Police Arrests 3241 Suspected Criminals In Six Months, Says Commissioner; SaharaReporters Questions Account

Posted: June 28, 2013 -

By SaharaReporters, New York

The police in Kano have announced the arrest of 3,241 suspects since January in a series of raids of criminal hide outs and black spots in the city, a whopping average of nearly 20 persons per day.

The Kano State Police Commissioner, Musa A. Daura, said 2,741 have been charged to court, he disclosed yesterday at a press conference.  Exhibits recovered from the suspects include 583 bottles of ‘Suck and Die;’ 1,280 tubes of rubber solution; 100 packages of tramol drugs; 39 knives, 15 swords, 7 locally made pistols, and a large quantity of Indian hemp.

Among the weapons he listed as recovered during the period, the commissioner listed 60 rounds of live ammunition, two AK-47 rifles, nine locally-made pistols and 74 cartridges, as well as cutlasses, sticks, long swords and breaking equipment.

The force also recovered 30 motor bicycles, 98 GSM handsets, cattle, 30 bags of rice, gold, jewelry, and clothing materials, the commissioner said.

Mr. Daura commended various people and bodies in the state for the successful campaign, including security agencies, religious leaders, traditional rulers, civil society, Hisbah and the citizens for assisting the command with useful information.

Preliminary SaharaReporters’ investigations however reveal curious holes in the story told by the commissioner concerning the seizures made so far this year.  In a statement by Mr. Daura himself three months ago, on the night of March 26, men of his command foiled an attempt by insurgents to destabilize the state, in the course of which they recovered a variety of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), guns and ammunition.
Among the items he listed as recovered in that one incident were 14 homemade grenades, nine remote controlled IEDs, two rifles, one fabricated rocket launcher, 238 rounds of different calibre of ammunitions, four rolls of wire connector and 12 power source were found concealed in the vehicle.
The police commissioner also said that those items were found in a Golf 3 motor vehicle, registration number AG701KTN.
It is unclear why there is such wide disparity in the items recovered over a period of six months when compared with items recovered in one incident alone.
What is worse is that the Joint Task Force (JTF) in Kano, of which the police is a part, has made several other recoveries since then.  Among them, on March 21, the JTF announced it had killed nine members of an invading Boko Haram gang.  Brigadier General Iliyasu Abba of the 3 Brigade told reporters at Bukavu Barracks that the JTF also recovered from the invaders two AK 47 assault rifles, three pistols, two small guns, one long range small rifle and 29 magazines.
On March 28, JTF spokesman Captain Ikediechi Iweha told the News Agency of Nigeria in Kano the group had recovered six AK 47 rifles, one FN rifle, one General Purpose Machine Gun, one pump action rifle and one PPK pistol.

He also listed 10 AK 47 magazines, one SMG magazine, one PPK pistol magazine, two smoke guns, 189 rounds of AK 47 ammunition, 43 rounds of 5.56mm SMG ammunition and eight rounds of 9mm ammunition for PPK pistols.

“The rest are 15 hand held explosive devices (IEDs), two (25 litres) containers of liquid chemical substance, 11 bags of nitrate fertiliser, 200 empty containers of assorted beverage drinks and other materials for making IEDs,” he said.

On May 2, Captain Iweha briefed the press on another incident in which he said an K47 rifle, 46 improvised explosive devices, two laptops, phones and their accessories were recovered from seven gunmen who were arrested.

Similarly, on May 31, the JTF announced the capture of 11 60mm anti-tank weapons, four anti-tank landmines, two rounds of ammunition for a 122-mm artillery gun, 21 rocket-propelled grenades, seventeen AK-47s with more than 11,000 bullets, and dynamite.

Yesterday’s statement by Police Commissioner Daura calls into question how weapons and other items captured from dissidents are accounted for, if at all, and whether the JTF and the police are being transparently supervised.