8 Arrested For Cultism, Drug Peddling In Kogi Polytechnic

The joint security team of Kogi State Polytechnic, Lokoja, have arrested three students and five others suspected to be members of a secret society and hard drug peddlers during the ongoing second-semester examination for the 2023/2024 academic session.

The non-students from Ekiti State but based in Abuja are Otitoju Christopher, Babatope Ayomide, Isaiah Babatunde, Shina Ayodeji and Makinde Olalekan.

LEADERSHIP gathered that they intended to cause harm to their targets and commotion on the campus during the ongoing second-semester examination.

This was in the guise of their end-of-exam graduation “celebration” rituals, which the management had earlier banned due to security concerns.

In the build-up to the ongoing second-semester examination, the Polytechnic Management got intelligence reports that some bad elements suspected to be into cybercrime, cultism and illicit drugs had perfected plans to import their members from other states and institutions to cause mayhem on the campus.

The public relations officer of the institution, Uredo Omole, who confirmed the incident, said the management got an intelligence report of the infiltration of some notorious old students of 2018/2019 sets who are suspected to be cultists alongside some imported mercenaries from Edo and Delta states that came that day to cause mayhem using the style of the motorcade, spraying of naira notes while seating on their vehicles on the highway.

He said, “In the process, there were gunshots from the direction of ‘Always Petrol station’ adjacent to the Polytechnic main gate where the imported mercenaries were allegedly camped since the campus was uncomfortable for them because of the security measures put in place.

“To prevent a repeat of the Monday incident, more security strategies were deployed ahead of Tuesday 16th July 2024, when the HND II students from the Department of Accountancy, Library and Information Sciences, and the Business Administration were scheduled to write their final papers”.

The security arrangement and tip-off led to the arrest of the three students and their mercenaries, who claimed to hail from Ekiti State but were based in Abuja.