Titi and Lekan are friends. They live together in a small room at Ore Ofero Street, Bariga, Lagos State. Both men share the only bed in the room. Once they come back from work, Lekan and his friend would retire to a beer pub in the area where they often wet their beak before retiring to bed. But in the early hours of Saturday, 31 August, 2013, both friends got what they did not bargain for in the hands of suspected armed robbers.
Being an environmental sanitation day, most of the residents were indoors at the time the robbers struck. Around 4:30 a.m, of the fateful day, about 15 suspected robbers, wielding series of weapons including shot guns, stormed the famous street to commence their operation. The first house they reportedly entered was the one owned by a civil servant, identified as Tajudeen Rafiu, who himself was still asleep.
But they could not gain easy access into the compound and they had to rely on an aluminium ladder they came with for the operation. Once they were in the compound, the robbers divided themselves into groups with each group attacking particular sections of the building. That was the building Titi and Lekan rented a room in. So, when the group that was assigned to ransack the rooms where the two friends were occupying arrived there, without wasting time, woke them from their sleep, and demanded for money.
As if shocked over the strange faces standing on top of their bed, the two friends reportedly protested that they did not have any money on them. Not convinced by the friends’ explanations, the robbers descended on them cutting them as they would a fish. In the end, the two friends almost passed on while crying out loud for help from other neighbours. Occupants of the next room suffered no less fate in the hands of the robbers.
In that room, the robbers reportedly made away with a laptop, telephone handsets, and a sum of N150, 000. Kunle Oloyede is a resident of the street. As a devout Muslim, Oloyede was doing ablution to say his early morning prayers when he suddenly noticed some figures climbing into the compound next to his.
According to Oloyede, “I can tell you that the robbers were about 15 or more. While most of them climbed the ladder and entered the compound, a few of them were outside watching. I was so shocked that I could not even move. I just hid myself behind a drum in the area,” he said. Asked to describe the modus operandi of the robbers, Oloyede claimed that they simply address themselves in police ranks.
“I think they had an inside source within the area because the way they were moving from house to house betrayed the fact that they knew the terrain too well.” Another eye witness, Biola Adewale, who spoke with Saturday Mirror on telephone, “We were all caught napping by the robbers when they stormed the area.
They started shooting into the air apparently to scare away people. At the room where my brothers were staying, the robbers broke open glasses of the front doors before they could gain entry into the apartment. While inside, they ransacked the whole place and they were able to make away with five GSM handsets, lap tops of one engineer who came to help us work on our system overnight. They even injured some of the occupants of the room,” Adewale said. Before the robbers escaped from the scene, they reported broke several windscreens of cars parked along the street.
Titi and Lekan, both of whom were battered by the robbers were immediately rushed to the hospital for treatment. The matter was reported at Pedro Police Station following morning. A police source at the station, who preferred anonymity, confirmed the incident to journalists, but said investigations into the incident was already underway. Asked whether there were targeted groups linked with the robbery, the source asked that the journalist should approach his superiors for comment.