Amotekun’s Ondo sweep nets 53 suspects, exposes migrant hideout

By Anuoluwa Amao

A joint security operation in Ondo State has pulled back the curtain on what officials describe as a troubling pattern of undocumented migration and organized crime, after Amotekun Corps operatives arrested 53 suspects tied to offences ranging from kidnapping and murder to burglary and cultism.

The operation’s most striking discovery came in Owo, where officers found 21 foreign nationals packed into just two rented apartments none of them able to produce valid documentation for their stay in Nigeria. Corps Commander Akogun Adetunji Adeleye credited the breakthrough to intelligence supplied by residents within the local Fulani community, whose cooperation has become a recurring thread in the state’s recent security successes.

The men told investigators they had crossed into Nigeria from other West African countries seeking informal work phone repairs and other menial jobs, according to their accounts. But when pressed for ECOWAS travel documents to justify their presence, none could produce any. Adeleye didn’t hold back in expressing his frustration at how easily such movement continues to happen. “I want to call the attention of the general public to the embarrassing way that foreigners traverse the state’s forests and cities under different guises,” he said, noting that local residents appeared to be facilitating their stay.

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Beyond the immigration angle, the commander flagged a deeper security risk: migrants left stranded once their local contacts or sponsors disappear often end up pulled into criminal activity themselves, whether by circumstance or coercion. “Most times when their sponsors abandon them, they become ready tools as criminals and accomplices,” he warned.

Elsewhere in the sweep, four individuals were picked up in connection with a scheme built entirely around deception staging fake kidnappings and circulating panic-inducing posts on social media purely to solicit money from sympathetic followers. Two of the four have already been taken into custody, according to Adeleye.

The most dramatic outcome of the operation, however, came from a separate case entirely a genuine kidnapping resolved through the same community partnership that cracked the immigration case. Acting on shared intelligence, security forces tracked down the culprits, recovering a military uniform from one suspect in the process, and rescued two boys who had been held captive.

One of the boys had been brutally attacked with a machete during his captivity struck across the head and body in what appeared to be an attempt on his life. He survived the ordeal and, according to Adeleye, is now recovering under medical care after being brought back alive.