The Police in Niger have arrested 109 suspects for alleged armed robbery, fraud and illegal mining in different parts of the state, the command’s Public Relations Officer, Muhammadu Abubakar, says.

Mr Abubakar, a deputy superintendent of police, told journalists on Wednesday in Minna that 96 of the suspects were paraded for illegal mining, 11 for armed robbery, and two for fraud.

He said the robbery suspects were responsible for recent attacks on students of the IBB University, Lapai, where they inflicted injuries on their victims and robbed them of valuables.

“The armed robbery suspects are all students of IBB University who attacked and robbed their fellow students and one of the suspects, Yakubu Isah, was identified by one of the victims of the attack.

“Two suspected of fraud had been defrauding people of huge sums of money using several tricks, they defrauded one of the victims of N156,000 after calling her with an unknown number pretending to know her.

“They deceitfully convinced her to transfer the said amount into a bank account belonging to one of them while 112 MTN, 74 Airtel, 19 Glo and 19 Etisalat sim cards were recovered from them,” Mr Abubakar said.

On those paraded for illegal mining, Mr Abubakar noted that they were arrested by a joint team of police, Army and Civil Defence at Tungan Goro, Minna.

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He said two single barrel guns, charms, shovels, one vehicle, gold measuring equipment among others were recovered from them.

Mr Abubakar said the suspects would be charged to court upon completion of investigation into their cases.

One of the illegal mining suspects, Dauda Saleh, said that he had only been in the business for two months and was ignorant of the law on illegal mining.

(NAN)