13th May, 2015
Cyriacus Izuekwe
A 19-year old student, Emmanuel Oti, has been paraded in Lagos for allegedly opening a Facebook account in the name of the national leader of All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
According to the police, the suspect, who claims to be a student of Mechanical Engineering at Delta State Polytechnic, Ozoro, specialises in internet fraud. He usually poses as a prominent Nigerian on social media platform, Facebook to defraud innocent job seekers.
The suspect was paraded by the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Kayode Aderanti, at Ikeja, Lagos, on Wednesday.
Aderanti said Oti opened a Facebook page in the name of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and has been defrauding gullible persons while claiming to be arranging jobs and contract for them with some of the major oil companies operating in Nigeria.
The police chief said Oti perfected the act by updating his victims with his nefarious activities.
Aderanti added that he had always maintained that the command will not rest on its oars in ensuring that any crime committed in the state is detected.
He also said some exhibits recovered from Oti include charms, photographs of white men, foreign and local SIM cards which he said were tools for his dubious trade.
Oti confirmed committing the alleged offence and said he started it last year after he was introduced into the act.
He said they were three in the group but the other two members were on the run.
He said he regretted his action, adding that, he needed not to have got involved in such crime because his family took good care of him.