The Gombe State Police Command has recovered a Toyota Highlander that vanished five years ago in Port Harcourt, unraveling a trail that stretched across several Nigerian states and into a neighbouring country.

According to the Command, the breakthrough came during a routine operation at the Gombe State Internal Revenue Service’s licensing office, where officers from the State Intelligence Department were working alongside personnel of the Federal Road Safety Corps on vehicle data verification.

While uploading records, the joint team flagged a Toyota Highlander with registration number FH823PHC after discrepancies emerged between its documentation and database records. Further checks revealed that the SUV matched a vehicle reported stolen by its owner, identified as Cecilia A Duru of Akwaka Lane, Rumuodumaya, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

Police records showed that the Highlander had been reported stolen in Port Harcourt, prompting an initial investigation that went cold as the vehicle disappeared from local tracking systems. The new lead in Gombe prompted detectives to reconstruct its movements over the intervening years.

Investigators discovered that the SUV was smuggled out of Nigeria into the Niger Republic two years after it was stolen, a pattern security analysts say is consistent with transnational vehicle theft syndicates that target high-value SUVs for resale or cloning.

The trail indicated that the vehicle re-entered Nigeria through Illela Local Government Area of Sokoto State, a known transit corridor for cross-border trade, before being moved to Kaduna State, where it was sold to an unsuspecting buyer. From there, it was later transported to Gombe, allegedly for the purpose of re-registration and integration into the local vehicle registry.

The Gombe State Police Command has opened a full-scale investigation aimed at dismantling the network behind the theft and trafficking of the vehicle. Detectives are working to identify all individuals who handled the SUV at various stages, from the initial theft in Port Harcourt to its movement across borders and eventual appearance in Gombe.

Police authorities say the case highlights the importance of integrated databases and inter-agency collaboration in tracking stolen vehicles, and have urged members of the public to verify vehicle histories thoroughly before purchase, especially when buying used cars from informal markets.