Three cable thieves arrested in Lagos Island.
Jonah Iboma
Three members of a four-man NITEL cable vandalism gang were arrested by avigilante team in Lagos Island in the early hours of today, Thursday, June 19,2008. According to a statement signed by the Public Relations Manager,Lagos Zone, Mr. Ig Nwangwu, those arrested, all men – Onyebuchi Anazodo, 21, Steven Aleke, 18, and Monday Ebube, 27 – cut the high-capacity, optic fibre cable linking Lagos to the rest of the country. He said so far, this was the fourth occasion the same cable would be cut by cable thieves since this year. On each of those occasions, NITEL sustained losses running into millions of naira in inconvenience to its customers given the loss of traffic as a result of the disruption of their service and then the cost of repair or replacement of the affected cable. While expressing regret the inconvenience would have caused its customers, he said the firm was hopeful to restore service on the cable very soon. The external line plant network of NITEL in Lagos Zone has a long history of vandalism and theft. This is perpetrated by persons who cut, cart away and sell the cables (on the cheap) to some receivers who, in turn, re-sell them to jewelers who smelt and forge them into forms of jewellery. NITEL and the security agencies are on trail of some of the smelting works in different parts of the country in the bid to ascertain their link with the spate of vandalism of(particularly) telecommunications and power cables all over the country. The vigilante arrangement is part of the community policing system recently evolved to supplement the regular patrol of NITEL cable routes by the police and other agencies.
Three members of a four-man NITEL cable vandalism gang were arrested by avigilante team in Lagos Island in the early hours of today, Thursday, June 19,2008. According to a statement signed by the Public Relations Manager,Lagos Zone, Mr. Ig Nwangwu, those arrested, all men – Onyebuchi Anazodo, 21, Steven Aleke, 18, and Monday Ebube, 27 – cut the high-capacity, optic fibre cable linking Lagos to the rest of the country. He said so far, this was the fourth occasion the same cable would be cut by cable thieves since this year. On each of those occasions, NITEL sustained losses running into millions of naira in inconvenience to its customers given the loss of traffic as a result of the disruption of their service and then the cost of repair or replacement of the affected cable. While expressing regret the inconvenience would have caused its customers, he said the firm was hopeful to restore service on the cable very soon. The external line plant network of NITEL in Lagos Zone has a long history of vandalism and theft. This is perpetrated by persons who cut, cart away and sell the cables (on the cheap) to some receivers who, in turn, re-sell them to jewelers who smelt and forge them into forms of jewellery. NITEL and the security agencies are on trail of some of the smelting works in different parts of the country in the bid to ascertain their link with the spate of vandalism of(particularly) telecommunications and power cables all over the country. The vigilante arrangement is part of the community policing system recently evolved to supplement the regular patrol of NITEL cable routes by the police and other agencies.
Comments