Our plan was to bomb Third Mainland Bridge with dynamite —Suspect

SUSPECTED Niger Delta militant who was arrested by the police has confessed that his gang planned to bomb the Lagos Third Mainland Bridge with dynamite.

The suspect (names witheld) told the police that all his gang wanted was amnesty and pipeline protection contract from the Federal Government.

“We have made several appeals and the government is not listening to us. The gang leader had said if we don’t blow up the Third Mainland Bridge, the government would not listen to us.

“We had concluded plans and we decided to carry out the attack by November ending. I am the group’s explosive expert and before I was arrested, we were going into the creek to conclude plans on how to carry out the attack,” he said.

He also said “we went into bank robbery and kidnapping because we wanted to get government’s attention.”

The bomb plot was foiled by operatives of the Inspector-General  of Police Special Intelligence Team.

The suspect, an Ijaw from Ese Odo Local Government Area of Ondo State, was arrested after a follow-up on the lead from the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), which hinted the Inspector-General of Police of a plan to bomb the Lagos bridge.

The arrested suspect and other members of his gang, who are still at large, were said to be operating from the creeks at Arepo and Ibafo areas of Ogun State and Ikorodu area of Lagos State.

The suspect, it was gathered, was trailed to Majidun river in Ikorodu by the intelligence team, who, after his arrest, recovered from him, two AK 47-rifles carefully tucked in a Ghana-Must-Go bag.

The suspect also led the team to another part of Ikorodu, where explosives were recovered from the boot of a vehicle.

It was gathered that the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, had, on receiving the hint of the planned attempt to bomb the bridge, ordered the team, headed by Abba Kyari, an assistant commissioner of police, to commence investigations into the activities of the militants.

Preliminary investigations by the police revealed that the gang was actually planning to bomb the bridge at the end of November and that the dynamites and other explosives for the job had been acquired.

Leader of the gang (name withheld) was said to have coordinated high profile bank robberies and kidnapping cases, including the kidnap of teachers and students of Barbington Macaulay Junior Seminary School in Ikorodu.

The suspect, whose gang was also said to be responsible for the abduction of the Oniba of Iba, Oba Goriola Oseni and four landlords in Isheri area of Lagos State, boasted that he had about 8,000 boys to battle the military.

It was gathered that the arrest of the suspect was subsequent to an earlier arrest of a member of the gang, who gave the team information on his movement.