Vodafone Cable Thieves Grabbed

Published on April 3, 2013 Three scrape dealers are in the custody of the Dansoman Police on suspicion of stealing telecommunication cables believed to belong to Vodafone Ghana Limited. It is estimated that the cables which were in two different types of 10000.6 and 10000.4 with their total length of 25 meters could be worth GH¢10, 000. The three, Nuhu Alidu, popularly known as Taller, 30 and Osman fafianu, also 30 years as well as Awal Yakubu, 26, who claimed to be residents of Agbogbloshie were arrested on March 27, 2013, and expected to be put before an Accra Circuit Court soon. ASP Christopher Owusu, Crime officer of the Dansoman District Police said at about 3:45 p.m. on the said date, while on duty, police personnel at Dansoman spotted two of the suspects, namely Osman Fafianu and Awal Yakubu, pushing a truck with two fertilizer sacks on it. On suspicion, he said, the police personnel decided to find out the content of the heavy sacks and so searched the track pushers. “A search conducted revealed that electrical wires suspected to be telecom cables were in the sacks and they were arrested and brought to the station,” said ASP Owusu. According to the Crime Officer, the suspects in their caution statements maintained they bought the items from someone near Sakaman, a suburb of Accra but were not ready to disclose the identity of the one who sold the cables to them. “During further investigations and interrogations they confessed they were asked by one Nuhu Alidu, to cart the cables to Agbogbloshie from Sakaman and later led the police to arrest him from his hideout at Agbogbloshie,” he added. ASP Owusu stated that when Alidu was arrested he confirmed that the cables were for him but denied stealing the cables and insisted he bought them from two men he met in a white car on the Odorkor-Mallam road on March 26, 2013. However, no matter how hard the police tried to make them give the names of the sellers of the cables Alidu was not ready to give them any information. “He woefully failed to identify them to the Police,” said Crime Officer Owusu when he briefed DAILY GUIDE at the Dansoman Police Station. Further investigation, ASP Owusu noted, led the police to the Vodafone Ghana Dansoman branch “and they identified the cables as theirs.” Latter an assessment of the cables which were greasy with some black substances on them indicated that they were underground cables. Cable theft has been reported as one of the biggest challenges of the telecommunication industry which cost millions of Ghana Cedis annually to replace either stolen or broken cables. Telecommunication operators have said on countless occasions that cable theft blight their infrastructure and disrupt their operations and end up frustrating users of the network. By Emelia Ennin Abbey