Since the incident of September 16, 2015, when nine agents of Department of State Services (DSS) were ambushed and killed by vandals at Arepo, specifically at Konu, outside Ikorodu, Lagos, normalcy has returned to the area and activities are back in full swing.
But family members of the missing operatives say that officials of the DSS claim that their men were alive and they were making untiring efforts to locate their whereabouts. Still, neither the police nor the government has come out with a concrete pronouncement about the fate of the DSS operatives.
In the homes of the slain operatives, deathly silence pervades everywhere, with family members devastated beyond words, anguish and sorrow still hovering over their abode like thick darkness.
A chance meeting with some of the family members showed that they are yet to come to terms with the true position of the fate of their loved ones because DSS officially informed them that their presumed dead breadwinners are still alive after all, in spite of glaring evidence contradicting its assertion.
At the moment, uncertainty and fear pervade their homes as they look forward each day with great expectation to the warm embrace of their loved ones with the assurances from DSS as all there is to go by.
Among those at the crossroads are family members of one of the missing operatives, identified simply as Obiora. He said his light-complexioned brother was one of the best hands when it came to cracking hard cases such as high profile kidnap and murder cases.
He said: “Earlier report had it that Obiora, alongside his other colleagues, went to Konu, Ikorodu that fateful day to effect the arrest of vandals who were siphoning petroleum products from a broken pipeline belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), but we were reliably informed that they were on a mission to track kidnappers of the wife of the Deputy General Manager of The Sun newspapers, Mrs Toyin Nwosu, who was abducted by robbers who invaded her Ago-Okota home two days earlier.
“The operatives described as the best hands for such operation, were on the kidnappers’ trail. Unfortunately, they ran into an ambush by the vandals who opened fire on sighting them. Even in the face of death, the operatives were said to have gallantly repelled their enemies. Surprisingly, since the incident occurred, no official statement has been released by the DSS nor has the issue been deliberated on at any level of government.”
