Last Monday was a sad day for a middle-aged man, his wife and two children driving home in a Ford sports utility vehicle some metres from Coconut Bus Stop on Apapa-Oshodi Expressway. The time was about 7:48pm and hundreds of vehicles had been trapped in the heavy traffic build-up which is the trademark of this section of the expressway; Tincan First Gate to Sunrise Bus Stop. With the glasses of their car completely rolled up, the family of four may have concluded that they were safe. Unfortunately, however, there was no true guarantee of that safety as bandits were lurking around unknown to motorists.
In the ensuing go-slow, a gang of two, armed with a gun and heavy metal, wasted no time in smashing the two side glasses of the car and dispossessing the victims of their hard-earned money and telephone handsets. This was so fast that within a minute, it was all over; car damaged, their valuables gone with the thieves.
Painful as this was, unfortunately, no help came for the victims as other motorists and passengers on board streams of vehicles stretching towards Sunrise Bus Stop, soaked in fear, raised no alarm as the robbers sauntered away with their loot.
This is also becoming a daily occurrence around Orile-Iganmu, Suru-Alaba and the Mazamaza Bridge on Lagos-Badagry expressway.
Armed bandits are gradually taking over these areasand turning them into criminal hotspots where they rob and maim their victims at will. In the last couple of weeks, several robberies had been recorded between Orile Iganmu and Mile Two, with the victims being motorists and commuters caught in traffic web.
Also posing a serious challenge to hapless motorists is the daily Mile Two evening rush-hour traffic jams. Hardly does a day pass without motorists being robbed of their valuables- cash, GSM handsets and handbags.
Ngozi Braid, the public relations officer of the Lagos Police Command, when contacted, said she had not been briefed on the regular robberies in traffic jam in the affected areas, promising, however, to get in touch with the divisional police officers in charge of the areas, to know what is happening within their jurisdictions and how they are tackling it.
CityFile findings however reveal that the robbers aside taking advantage of the regular gridlock, are also emboldened by the huge darkness that envelope the Mile Two, Orile-Iganmu and Suru-Alaba axis to carry out their heinous crimes. Apapa-Oshodi and Lagos-Badagry expressways are two major roads in Lagos where street lighting is non-existent.
Checks further show that the bandits lurk around the gridlock and intermittently swoop on their victims and melt away into the prevailing darkness, unchallenged. They are usually two to five in number, armed with dangerous weapons including guns with which they force their victims to submission.
Their modus operandi includes tapping on cars trapped in the traffic jam to draw the attention of the occupants to the guns in their hands and ordering their victims to wind down their glasses. Resistance to this order is met with instant breaking of the glasses and forceful opening of the car’s doors before dispossessing the occupants of their valuables and cash.
Yinka Alawode, a female journalist with BusinessDay Newspaper along with other staff of the media house recently fell victims of this type of traffic robbery. According to Alawode, the robbers pounced on them at Suru-Alaba while driving home in her Suzuki car at about 10pm.
Recounting the terrifying experience, Alawode said “I and three of my colleagues left Apapa at 10pm Wednesday March 20, expecting that the road would be free all the way to Mile Two. But at Suru-Alaba, there was traffic congestion and it was a standstill. There were four of them, about 20 years more or less of age. There was a tanker in my front, so I did not see the boys in good time.
They hit the glass of the door on my side, the glass shattered injuring my elbow and some pieces fell inside my dress.
“One of the boys was holding a gun while the other one held my cloth at the neck and demanded, ‘Bring it!’ With his other hand, he reached to the back and collected the phone and some money from one of my colleagues sitting at the back. They must have unlocked the central lock as they shattered the glass.
“One of them went to the other side of the car. Another colleague of mine was sitting in front, with her bag and mine by her feet. They opened the car on her side and collected our bags. Beside us was a coastal bus filled with people and all round were cars and the occupants just watched haplessly in horror.
“That was how they took the bag containing my company ID card, National ID card, ATM cards, bank tokens, two cheque books, my Sony camera, Windows Huawei phone, Nokia C3 phone, micro recorder, two flash drives, SSM internet modem, about 100 business cards belonging to me and some of my contacts and some cash. They took virtually all my working tools.”
Another victim, also a staff of BusinessDay who pleaded anonymity, had her Kia Rio jeep glasses completely shattered as the bandits attacked her and three other occupants of the car while driving home in traffic at Orile-Iganmu at about 9:20pm. She and other occupants of the car were robbed of their valuables and cash.
“It was like a dream! I just saw them close to my car and before I could say anything, they had broken the glasses and opened the door. They showed us the gun and robbed us of everything we had,” the victim lamented, pointing out the urgent need for the police to beef up security on the Orile-Mile Two stretch of the Lagos-Badagry expressway.
However, the divisional police headquarters at Orile-Iganmu has started responding to the insecurity situation on the road, as their men are now being sighted around Doyin Bus Stop whenever there is traffic congestion stretching all the way into the Eric Moore end of the Iganmu-Ijora Bridge. But this is not yet the case at Mile Two, Suru-Alaba and Coconut Bus Stop on Apapa-Oshodi Expressway.
Joshua Bassey
