The Oyo State Police Command recently added a peculiar element to the parade of suspected criminals when it paraded three suspects accused of killing hotelier Gbenga Owolabi, who was based in the United Places, and Rachael Opadele, a final-year student at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, without identifying the suspects or revealing their states of origin.
Prior to engaging in this strange practice, the Oyo State police had always followed protocol by disclosing the names and states of origin of the criminals on parade and, in some cases, arranging for media interviews.
However, the Oyo State Police Command paraded the three suspects without revealing their identities in what many perceived as an effort to politicise insecurity and conceal the ethnicity of the perpetrators.
Observers of the new development said that the police purposefully withheld the suspects' identities so that the public would not be able to determine their ethnic backgrounds.
Many people think that the suspects are from a wealthy area of the nation and that they are mostly to blame for the unrest that has spread throughout multiple states in the nation.
“The police are afraid to name the suspects so that their powerful kinsmen heading the security agencies will not feel embarrassed. They are playing politics with insecurity. They know the people causing insecurity but they are afraid of being accused of profiling a tribe. How can the police parade suspects before journalists without disclosing their names?” a resident of Ibadan, Oyo State capital, queried.
The Commissioner of Police, Adebowale Williams, who paraded them at the command headquarters in Eleyele, Ibadan, said the suspects also included killers of a police inspector and kidnappers of a former Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan, Professor Adigun Agbaje, on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, Adewale Osifeso, said nemesis caught up with the suspected killers of the late hotelier while trying to collect a ransom of N10.7million from the family of another victim, Waheed Hammed.