Police detectives are now on the trail of a 26 year old airport cleaner, Chibuzor Onuegbe who allegedly smuggled N242 million out of the baggage store of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) undetected. He has since relocated to the United Kingdom.
In the course of investigation, three other suspects have been arrested. They are the cleaner’s accomplice Ifeanyi Francis, his girl friend Chioma Obinabor and his elder brother Kalu Faith Onuegbe. They are all being accused of assisting the principal suspect to commit the crime and flee the country.
Saturday Sun learnt from the police that the stolen money was packed in a bag in US dollar denomination totalling $1.5million which belongs to a middle aged woman (names withheld). She was said to have deposited the sum at the MMIA baggage room on October 30, 2013 for safe keeping. She discovered that the money was missing when she wanted to pick it.
After all efforts to trace the money failed, she reported the incident at the Lagos Police Command headquarters in Ikeja where the Commissioner of Police, Umaru Manko directed the Officer In-Charge of Special Anti Robbery Squad, Abba Kyari to fish out the culprits.
In the course of investigation, three suspects were indicted for complicity. But then, the prime suspect, Chibuzor had relocated to the UK.
I got only N60m from the deal- Francis
Face to face with his interrogators, Francis who claims to be an Engineering student at Government Technical College, Owerri, Imo State confessed that he never knew the content of the bag until he left the airport. In his words: “I met Chibuzor early last year when I travelled to Enugu and we became friends. I am aware that he works as a cleaner at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos. Sometime in October, he called me that there is a job that he wants to execute and I will earn so much money. I travelled down to Lagos with the excuse that I wanted to visit my sister who lives in Lagos.
“He told me that he wanted to smuggle out some abandoned luggage from the baggage store at the international airport. He gave me a bag containing old laptops and clothes. He also gave me a tag ticket which was attached to the bag.
The deal was that I would get to the airport as early as 6am and move to the baggage store and drop the bag. I will tell the store keeper that I want to register the bag and will be back in evening to pick it up.
“As agreed on October 30, 2013, I went to the baggage store with the bag that already had a tag. The store keeper asked me to pay N300 for a day and N600, if I am to pick it the next day. I paid N300 and dropped the bag. Later in the evening as agreed, I came to the airport and picked the bag. When I saw Chibuzor, he told me that the deal did not work out, and that I will be repeating the same process.”
The next day as agreed, Francis went through the same process and dropped the bag. In the evening at about 7pm, he went back and picked the bag. “I discovered that the bag was unusually heavy. Since I knew what was on ground, I pretended that it was the same weight. It was easy to pick the bag because I had a tag and a ticket.
“I quickly moved and joined Chibuzor who was already with a taxi. I asked him what was in the bag and he told me to calm down that I will get to know. We arrived his street and stopped in an area where cars were parked. He opened the bag; it was then that I realised that it contained bundles of dollar notes.
“I was speechless because the amount was much. He told me that as a cleaner, he had access to the baggage room. All he did was to unlock my bag to which he had the key and transfer the bag of money into my own bag. He told me to calm down that there is a lot to gain and that he needs to contact his friends at the airport before the money will be shared. Those friends, he explained were the ones who gave him information that such amount of money was in the baggage room and the colour of the bag. He tried to close the bag and it was difficult, so he had to remove some bundles into another bag. We heard the voice of some boys coming towards us, so Chibuzor hurriedly left the spot and moved into their house. He forgot that he kept some money in the bag that I was holding. He rushed out and promised to call me for my share, ” Francis further said.
According to him, as soon as he got home chibuzor realised that I was carrying the naira equivalent of N60 million. “I decided to keep that money since Chibuzor did not remember that it was in my bag. He called me later in the night demanding the money. I denied and he told me that I have taken my share. He switched off his phone and till date, I have not seen or heard from him.”
Continue reading @SUN
Leave a Reply