Written by: Oluwatoyin Malik

A suspected serial armed robber and rapist, Habib Ajadi, whose area of specialty was to attack the students of Ladoke Akintola University (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso and rob them, has been arrested by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (Oyo/Ogbomoso annex) of the Oyo State Police Command.

The suspect was reported to have severally waylaid the students along secluded roads, attacked them and made away with their valuables such as laptops, phones, jewelry and cash before his latest arrest at a flashpoint at Under ‘G’ area of Ogbomoso.

The Commissioner of Police in Oyo State, Leye Oyebade, told Crime Reports on Thursday, May 12, that Ajadi was arrested on May 2 at about 12:30a.m after the SARS operatives received a distress call that he robbed a LAUTECH student, one James (other name withheld) of his handsets at Under ‘G’ area.

The police commissioner added that previous reports indicated that Ajadi also assaulted his female victims sexually in attempts to rape them. He listed the items recovered from the suspect to include a Toyota Camry (Muscle) with registration number KSF 563 DU, 35 assorted cell phones and a wheel spanner.

In an interview with Crime Reports, 30-year-old Ajadi confessed to his deeds, blaming the devil. The suspect, who disclosed that he graduated in 2012 from Nasarawa State University where he read Computer Science, said he was a Computer Engineer who repairs handsets in Ilorin “It is true that I have been stealing from students. I am from Kwara State. I started stealing some months back. I operated alone around LAUTECH hostels and campus. I usually collected phones from female students of LAUTECH.

“My method was to court their friendship, after which I would ask them to give me their phone to save my number. In the process of pretending to type my number, I would zoom off in car with the phone. In a case where my victim is in my my car, I would scare her with a wheel spanner to make her surrender the phone. I usually operated in the night. I have never used a gun.

“I also visited the hostels a couple of times to steal when the students were sleeping.

There was another occasion when I knocked on the door of a hostel room, pretending to be a neighbour. After they opened, I announced that I was there to rob them. I was using my car to do the operation. I have been to Mecca to perform hajj; I believe my action was devil’s work because I was not comfortable with what I was doing.”

One of the victims, (name withheld), a 500 level student of Agric Economics, told Crime Reports that the suspect attacked her and her friend on their way back to hostel from church on March 11. “It was about to rain that evening so there was scarcity of commercial bike operators. He stopped to help us. At a point, he made as if he wanted to turn back to buy petrol but veered off the road towards a deserted road that leads to a cemetery.

“He announced that he had locked the car doors centrally threatening that if we tried anything stupid, he would waste our blood.

He said we should cooperate with him and hand over our phones. He collected our phones and my purse. He saw high cloud (a security device) on my phone and asked me to remove it. When I told him I could not do it because the phone was given to me by my fiancé, he started hitting me with spanner and I started bleeding from the mouth.

“He asked us to bend our heads and drove us towards Ilorin. He threatened that if he could not access the phone, he would take me to his gang members who would take turns to rape me. He used vulgar words. He started molesting me by touching me, after which he said that he would have to rape us.

“He told us that to get down from the car and lie down. As he was urinating before he could carry out his intention, the two of us escaped.”

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