An unregistered Cross Back DS 7 car reportedly stolen from Marseille, France in November 2023 has be recovered by the police in Abuja.
The Grey car with chassis No VR IJ45GFUKY127507 was found displayed for sale at G &T Motors, an auto mart in the Area 8 Garki District of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city on Monday, January 8.
Mr. Verid Emmanuel, a France National and Police attaché at the France Embassy in Nigeria tipped off police at the Federal Capital Territory, FCT command on the stolen car tracked to Abuja.
Acting on the credible intelligence, operatives of the police Rapid Response Squad, RRS, led by Umar Kadiri, a Chief Superintendent of Police, CSP, stormed the auto mart and recovered the vehicle.
The police said Abubakar Isah, a 36-year-old auto dealer at G&T Motors has been arrested in connection with the cross border car theft.
Isah, who has reportedly confessed to crime, told the police that he was given the car to sell by an accomplice he simply identified as Nura, resident at the Republic of Togo.
Detectives at the Criminal Investigation Department, CID of the FCT police command are digging deep into the transnational car theft said to be surging in Nigeria.
In 2022, a 2017-model Toyota Highlander stolen from Ontario Street, Canada was tracked to Nigeria. The vehicle belonging to Mr. Ahmad Abdallah reportedly disappeared from his street in September.
Abdallah had given up on finding the car after surveillance video of the thieves unlocking his 2017 Toyota Highlander provided no clue.
Six months after, CTV News Investigates said it was able to find his vehicle at a lot in a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria.
After seeing the video of his own car for sale overseas, Abdallah realised how truly organised the criminals who stole his car might actually be. “I got a call from you. You sent me a picture of my car. Oh it blew my mind,” he said in an interview. “This is clearly a big operation. There should be more people looking into it…we’re talking millions of dollars. This has to be taken seriously,” he said.
Reports indicated that New Zealand has the highest auto-theft rate for any fairly large country in the world, at 1172.0 per 100,000 residents in 2018. However Bermuda in its most recent year of reported auto-thefts, reported a rate of 1215.3 per 100,000 people.
Cars stolen from Ontario and Quebec are openly being advertised and sold in West African countries, including Nigeria and Ghana, according to a Marketplace investigation, which also found thieves are targeting vehicles with push-to-start ignitions.
