SINCE soldiers took over security on the Delta State axis of the Warri-Sapele- Oghara-Benin and Warri-Eku-Abraka highways, and other strategic entry and exit points in the state, there has been some measure of sanity in the state.
For a while in Warri and Sapele, it looked as if kidnappers and other criminals, who had scared the daylight out of residents in the state, were afraid of confronting the fierce-looking soldiers. Ironically, the same criminals who live by the sword are afraid of dying by the sword.
Death penalty
Besides the military offensive, some persons attribute the development to the seriousness members of the Delta State House of Assembly have demonstrated in putting final changes to a Bill for a Law to Prohibit Terrorism, Kidnapping, Hostage- taking and the Use of Bombs and Other Explosives and other Matters Connected Thereto. The bill stipulates death for offenders.
Indeed, residents, who were beginning to heave a sigh of relief, were taken aback, last month, when soldiers seized six youngsters, aged between 17 – 27 years, one of them, the son of a staff of a multinational oil company, suspected to be members of an inter-state kidnapping/ car-snatching syndicate, on Warri-Sapele Road.
The question on the lips of many was what were the kidnappers/car snatchers thought they were doing on that road with the way soldiers tactically positioned themselves, from morning to night.
The suspects, who spoke to reporters, admitted they were kidnappers/car snatchers, but claimed they were only two months old in the nefarious business. Security agents are still interrogating the suspects to understand their modus operandi and sponsors.
Hullabaloo
But, not even the arrest of the “boys” and a suspected dare-devil kidnapper, Anayo Anyanwu, who had been on the wanted list of the police at Okwe, near Asaba, has generated the kind of controversy that the killing of a suspected kidnapper and assassin, Tony Moro, has generated in the last few days.
Moro and another suspect, Fidelis Amani, were reportedly shot dead by men of the 3 Battalion, David Ejoor Barracks, Effurun, near Warri, in a sting operation.