37 persons suspected to be members of secret cults, which have been terrorizing Calabar, the Cross River State capital, were, on Friday, arraigned at a Magistrate Court, Calabar presided over by Chief Magistrate Emmanuel Okokon for alleged armed robbery and then remanded at Afokang Prison.
Residents of Calabar, for over four days, had lived in fears following the activities of persons suspected to be members of secret cults. The state police public relations officer, Mr. Hogan Bassey, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, ASP, identified the cultists as members of the Vikings and KKK.
The suspects were also said to have engaged in supremacy battle over which group controls a political party’s congresses.
Reading the charge, a police prosecutor, Inspector Nku Jones, said the suspects and others at large on 13 March, 2012 at about “1900 hours at Lugard Street Calabar while armed with offensive weapons to wit, locally made pistols and machetes, did attack and robbed one Effiom Akpan of the sum of N500,000”.
Magistrate Okokon, after hearing the charge, adjourned the matter to 9 April, and ordered that the suspects be remanded at Afokang Prisons in Calabar South.