Christopher Oji

Two suspected armed robbers who allegedly attacked a white man have been arrested by policemen attached to the Agboju Police Station, Lagos.

The suspects are being interrogation at the Federal Special Anti Robbery Squad (FSARS), Ikeja.

One of suspects, Offon, told Daily Sun, “We target white people because their money is valuable. When they convert their money, it will be big. There is no money in the country, so it is expatriates that have money to spend. We used to go to banks to monitor bank customers. We would follow our target from the bank to their homes and collect the money from them. We have a gun, which I brought from Bayelsa State for N35,000.

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“We were not into armed robbery before, but were using the gun to harass people who did oil bunkering in Apapa beach. We would wait for them to go into the river and creeks to do their bunkering after which we used arms to harass them and they would settle us with two drums of fuel. After the sale of the fuel, I would make N30,000. The business of bunkering is done on Sunday when the security agencies are relaxing. I started using the gun for robbery when the business of bunkering became free for all. It Is now an all-comers affair. We started serious fighting over who should be in control of the area. One of our elders that we met at at Ajeromi open field told me that we could use the small arms to make good money. It was the man, Taju, that introduced us to robbery.

“Our first robbery was not successful as our target, a white man, didn’t go home straight. He was driving round Lagos and we were following him but we couldn’t pin him down. He would go from one club to an- other until our fuel finished in our okada and we couldn’t locate him. That day we resolved that we should not be robbing only white people but use our initiative to rob other Nigerians. But our informant in the bank would always discourage us that Nigerians don’t withdraw big money. Last Monday, our informant called us that a white man had made huge withdrawal and we followed the white man to his house. As he was opening his gate, we pointed a gun at him and he handed the money over to us. We didn’t open the parcel of money and we didn’t know how police got to know and they chased us till we were arrested.

“Really, we would have shot the white man if he had resisted, because we were desperate to get money. I needed money to buy Keke Marwa (tricycle) while my partner, Chinedu, wanted to invest in commercial motorcycle. We had vowed that after the white man we would take the money and invest it. But we could not succeed.”