 Good to have you back here on the breakfast on plus TV Africa. Our next conversation is on a follow up on the conversation concerning in Yorubong-Umaran, the late Yorubong-Umaran who was murdered after going to a, well, going job searching. There, of course, has been further digging into that case by David Houdain and others. And, of course, a lot of other revelations have emerged mostly about the connection between some persons in Aqaibom state and even higher up in the police command. It's 13 days since the disappearance and subsequent death of Yorubong-Umaran. And what we know is that the police have a suspect in custody. What we do not know is how far the investigation into a death has gone. Now, Independent Journalist has published what can be best described as a plan to skew the details of Yorubong-Umaran's killing in Yorubong-Aqaibom state. The journalist, David Houdain, is joining us on the breakfast this morning. Good morning and thanks for joining us, David. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Good morning. Thanks for being here. All right. Let's start with the findings. A lot of people struggled with reading through the article yesterday until it eventually was open for people to go through it. So share with us the most shocking details from your investigation. Right. So I think it's for the purpose of this conversation, it's good to start from the end, sort of. So if you remember on May 2, there was a press release from the Aqaibom state command saying that an arrest has been made. The suspect, Uduak Frank Ezekia-Aqqaib, has been taken into custody and there was a team of police officers that took him into custody. One of those police officers was named as Superintendent Samuel Ezeuwe. Now starting from the end, as I said, if you've read the article, you'd realize that this guy, the Samuel Ezeuwe, the police superintendent, has been in contact with the suspect, Frank Aqqaib, before the arrest. And in fact, it was a suspect who initiated conversation with this guy. And how I was able to establish this was that I had an insider from telecoms company who actually sort of leaked cold data to me. Technically, I'm not supposed to have access to that data. So when I was doing the article, I had to be very careful. I couldn't just publish screenshots as they were. I had to reproduce the data to try and protect my sources' privacy. And what those call records show without a shadow of a doubt is that Frank Aqqaib, the suspect, the 20-year-old suspect, was not working alone. And that the Aqqaibom State Command is intentionally trying to present the case in a way that suggests that it is a standalone offender, so as not to potentially bring in bigger people who will be potentially implicated by this case. One of the most obvious ways that you can figure this out is by looking at the crime scene. Now, nobody here is the professional crime scene investigator. Nobody here is a detective. But we know, as a matter of something that is obvious, that when there is this sort of crime, the crime scene is supposed to be caught on off in public. The police are supposed to have exclusive access to the crime scene. No one else except, no one except not enforcement is supposed to be allowed into the crime scene. And yet, what we have seen over the past week or so is that the location where this murder took place has become something of a pilgrimage site for the public in Aqqaibom. People have been walking up and down, taking videos for social media. Different pictures and videos have been popping up, showing boots from youth corporals, showing books, showing uniforms, Scottish clothing from previous victims' bones, that sort of in shallow graves. And what this does is that the evidence which can be used to build a case or something much bigger than just the murder of Imi Umare, something, the evidence which suggests that there is something much bigger going on that is potentially a human trafficking or human organ trafficking going on. That evidence is intentionally being destroyed or compromised in such a way as to make it inadmissible in court. That's what the Aqaibom Police Command is doing. Now, I was on a TV show last night with the Aqaibom State Police Commissioner. And this man spent 15 minutes just dissembling, because I put these questions to him that, first of all, your police commission, your police department, is intentionally sabotaging this case, that there's obviously something bigger going on than just a single 20-year-old suspect and that you are intentionally bungling this case to try and make this guy, set this guy up to take the fall for everything. Obviously, this guy is a murderer. Obviously, this guy killed Imi Umare, that's not a doubt. But the point is that there's something much bigger going on. And potentially, you could be talking about something which would explain several unexplained disappearances and deaths going back a period of years. And instead, the Aqaibom Police Command is just trying to present it as a standalone rape and murder case against this 20-year-old guy and that there's nothing else going on here. The case is solved, everybody please go home. And then they have offered no explanation as to how come this guy has been in contact with at least one police officer from the Aqaibom State Command before even there was any talk about arresting him or anything and he was the one who initiated the contact. And by the way, I'm just going to quickly mention this. There's no data that I have access to that the police did not have even before I did, right? The only reason that I had access to that data is because an insider leaked it to me. The police don't need an insider. The police have access to this data at will. They have the law enforcement. They have all of this data. So there's nothing I'm saying which is news to them because they knew all of this even before I did. So then you'd have to ask, so go ahead. Really David, I was actually going to ask you because going through that article you wrote, I saw how you basically gleaned information just by using tech. Tools that people will see as simple like true caller. You were able to use those sources to trace the phone records and history of the prime suspect in this case. So then if you say that the issue is not that the police does not have access to tech and data, what really is the problem here? Also, you had this gut feeling that the prime suspect, Udrak was not acting alone. Why did you have that feeling? Well, first of all, let me start with your second question as to why I think it's obvious that he wasn't acting alone. If the videos and text and pictures I've been showing up on social media over the past few days showing the site of the crime, we've been seeing materials there, some with dates on them like books and stuff, going back as far back as 2013, right? And the suspect is 20 years old. 2013 is about eight years old. So except for saying that he started doing these things on his own at 12 years of age and since he was 12, he has been unilaterally going around kidnapping, raping and murdering women. I somehow was able to handle this on his own as a preteen. It's obvious he has been working with people and then the phone records, which I also published in the article, clearly suggest that there's at least one person whom we don't know of because this person's number wasn't registered on true color. You weren't able to bring up this person's identities. This unknown person is in constant contact with this Uduak Frank Atman fellow. So who is this person we don't know? I tried all the tricks in the book and we don't know. So after the article got published yesterday, several people got in contact with me that they went to check that number and magically that number started showing up on true color and on similar applications as Frank Atman. So was Frank Atman talking to Frank Atman on the phone? That doesn't make any sense. So who is this person we don't know? That needs to be established. And then the, sorry, just refresh my mind about what the first question was. The first question I was asking you was talking about police data, really. Right, right, right, right. So as I mentioned, there's no data I have that the police don't have in multiples. They know much more about this case than I do. So then when you're not asking yourself why are they intent of presenting this case in a way that clearly makes no sense, in a way that clearly suggests that this individual person is being set up to take the fall for a bigger case. So the only conclusion we can reach is that the police themselves are in on this thing. And bear in mind that the police put out a press statement stating that this fellow has been arrested and that this group of officers, including S.P., Samuel, A. Zilgo, heroically apprehended the suspect and blah, blah, blah. And then the phone records show that first of all, this murder was committed on 29 April. On the 30th of April, shortly after meeting this mystery Khufri F. Young person at the High End Hotel in Wuyo, owned by Drillapadu. Then the suspect then calls a police officer, this police officer on the phone, and they have a conversation for 90 seconds, 93 seconds. So what were they talking about? Why is the suspect initiating contact with the police officer? How did he get the police officer's number? What were they talking about? Only two of them and the phone network can give us that information. I didn't have access to the actual voice notes, the actual call data. So I don't know what was said. All I had access to was the call record. So it's only those two people who can tell us what they're talking about. And how it is that somebody who would later be arrested by this police superintendent, Samuel A. Zilgo, called him a couple of days before and had a conversation with him for 90 seconds. And when I put this question to the police commissioner yesterday, the police commissioner gave an absurd reply. I don't think he thought it through and he said, he said the police were trying to bail out the suspect. Well, it's the suspect that initiated the contact with this police officer. So how on earth did the suspect get this police officer's number? And what were they talking about? So before he started talking about whether the police was trying to bail him out. So clearly that's his life. So what is going on here? And why is that crime bomb state police command being less than truthful with us? These are the questions I need to answer. So should it be, or would you expect that it would be normal investigation procedure that the police should have, even before you did, should have gone through his phone record, should have seen that he spoke with these persons, should have maybe also been questioning these other persons that are in his phone records. Should that, is that expected to be normal procedure? And why do you think that's not happening? I mean, I think that's obvious. I think even before making any kind of public statement, this thing should have been done. And as I've said twice now, all of this information is freely available to the police. It's very easily available. All it takes is one phone call. If the police wants to requisition information from the telecoms company, it's not a difficult thing for them to do. They don't need to go to court and get an order or something. They are the police. They have their ways and means of doing this thing. Ordinary citizens like us can't do it. In fact, technically, the fact that I had access to these things, technically it's against the law, technically it's against the NCC code. Technically I'm not supposed to have access to these things. The only reason I did is because an insider risked their job to give me access to these things, right? I take, I mean, they were to be found out, they've been in very serious trouble. So the police has this information ahead of everybody else. So even like, why have they been so invested in pretending as if they don't know anything and that the entire case begins and ends with this 20-year-old fellow called Frank Agba. And there's, you know, everybody please go home. This guy is a Syrian rapist. That's all there is to it. We've arrested him. Hopefully, we haven't even released a mugshot to show that we've arrested him, but just take our word for it that we've arrested him and everything is fine, nothing to see here, go home, it's the end. I'm sorry, that's not good enough. So does this... I need answers. Does this also... If they're right... Sorry, sorry. Yeah, and I just was gonna ask, you know, if this also, you know, should point Nigerians, you know, to start to think of other cases that have been, you know, like this and the fact that there was no further investigation into many other cases, it ended with one person being a prime suspect and that's it. Absolutely. The idea that by sort of like this bungled five-minute investigation, we can get a full picture of what has happened and that nobody is allowed to question what the outcome of the case was. It's absurd, right? I don't think it's a controversial comment to say that. There is a lot of corruption in the Nigerian police force, right? That's not a controversial comment to make. I have family members in the Nigerian police force. So it's not as if I have something personal against Nigerian policemen or something, but it's just the reality. We know what it is. Like, none of this is a secret. So if the point is now being raised that, look, there's something very fishy about the way this case and other cases like this have been handled and that the way sort of like the police goes out of its way to avoid doing actual investigative work, which by the way, they are very well qualified and very well equipped to do, and instead they find ways to avoid doing their job and to sort of like just tie everything and like pretty go and everybody go and that's the end. I call that justice. I don't think it's a controversial opinion to go. Now, this is not good enough. It's simply not good enough. It's simply one to do, especially in a case like this where I think especially in the younger demographic of Nigerians that a lot of us identify with, we can all see a bit of ourselves in Umaren, right? This person was just going to look for a job. That's all. She didn't commit any crime. She wasn't hurting anyone. She just wanted a job and she went looking for a job, she went looking for a job interview and then she got horrendously raped and murdered. So then like it then feels as if so, if at that level you can't do anything in Nigeria without being liable to suffer such things and then the police afterward is going to come out and start acting as if they are PR practitioner working on behalf of the criminals and I instead try to shield people from justice and I try to obstruct any possibility of an actual investigation taking place. Well then clearly we have a problem. So David. I personally have a problem. David then, we understand how bad it is or how bad it seems to be here in the country. Your article implicates two key people. You're implicated apart from Uduak, who you're now saying is touted to be the lone suspect. You implicated SP Sam Izugu as well as a staff of the Federal Ministry of Nigeria Delta that's Khufri Effyong. In more Sena Climes, what will be the fate of these people and what would the police be doing rather than come on national TV and actually defend them? In Sena Climes, even before I did an investigative, you know, article or anything, these two people would have already been in custody because as I said, the police have access to all of this phone data, all of these phone records. So specifically with regard to the Khufri Effyong fellow, who I think is probably the key to the entire story based on the length of interaction and the time of interaction that he had it with and the shared divergence between the kind of circles he moves in and the kind of circles that the suspect moves in. So if I were the police, it's very obvious that this is a person of interest here. How is it that this high ranking civil servant who stays instead of like the Khufri Effyong, you know, the up-market parts of town, this person on paper has nothing in common with someone like Frank Akpan. So how is it that Frank Akpan is coming to visit this guy at this address in Edwards Housing Estates? They are spending four, five, six minutes on the phone. They're exchanging text messages. What are they talking about? What is the nature of the interaction between them? What is the relationship? I cannot believe that you then say that you have taken in the suspect Frank Akpan and that the person this suspect has been communicating with repeatedly and then the police officer that this suspect started communicating with shortly after he finished communicating with the Khufri Effyong fellow which would indicate that this Khufri Effyong fellow has probably given him this police officer's contact details. And then you say, no, there's nothing to see there. It's fine. It's just a sole suspect. And if I hadn't had access to this data, if someone hadn't actually leaked it to me, we simply wouldn't know. And we would just think, you know, well, maybe the police are telling the truth. Maybe it's just one person. Maybe he wasn't working alone. Or maybe he was actually working alone. And that's it. Why on earth are the police so invested in hiding from facts which are now in public domain except they want to argue that the data presented is not true, in which case I can present the data in full. And then we can compare it to the data that they have. Because by law, the telecoms from the East allow to tamper with such data. So it's always going to be the same data. The one I have and the one they will show is the same data. So what is going on? That's the question. David, so basically your same week, we can trust the police to carry out a thorough investigation into this murder of the young girl who will now be buried on Friday, May 14th. Certainly, not the acquired bomb state police command as it currently exists, not led by police commissioner who came on TVS today and lied to the entire country that the reason that the suspect was having contact with one of his men was because the police was trying to lure him out. Meanwhile, it was the suspect that initiated contact with his man with somebody working under him. He's superintendent of police, a senior police officer. So how can you expect justice from such a setup? Clearly, the acquired bomb state police command for whatever reason has taken a side here and it's not on the side of justice, right? I'm not going to make a frontal accusation on TV because I'm not trying to get you guys to find five million dollars by lying to Muhammad. But the fact is that the acquired bomb state police command has taken a side and it's clear that if they are left to their own devices, there is going to be no actual investigation and there's going to be no actual closure. They're just going to find a way to tie a meatball and everything and tell everybody to go home. And wait until this blows over and the public loses interest, as always happens in Nigeria. That's what they're banking on, that eventually people will get tired and people will look for and then they will rest. David and Houndain, thank you so much for your work and for the article and we hope that it starts a process where more and more lives will be saved from situations like this. We'd love to speak with you again. Indeed, David. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So we'll take a break here and I return to discuss the national issue of security. Do stay with us.