Ahmed Azeez, 24, Tunde Yagba, 33, Ajose Kehinde, 33, and Sunday Adewale, 25, were arrested today after being tracked by the Intelligence group of the Amphibious Ambush Squad (AAS), 23 hours after the vessel had departed to Malaysia.
From the account of the suspects, this has been a recurring phenomenon in the maritime environment as most of them claimed to have previously gone through this process to South Africa, Spain, and Canada, only to be deported.
One of them, Azeez, said: “I had no other option but to travel out of the country since I couldn’t make it in Nigeria. I didn’t want to steal so I decided to stowaway. We paid a fisherman N500 to ferry us across to the vessel. We bought garri and gala to tide us over.”…. na there I even kno say gala don become 70 naira….
