Residents of Orisigun Street, Iyana
School bus stop, in the Kosofe Local Government Area of Lagos State say
they have been living in
fear since the conclusion of the elections.
They explained that a gang of jobless political thugs had resorted to robbing them in the community at dawn.
Our correspondent learnt that the gang,
numbering six, laid siege to the street “almost every day” between 5am
and 6am and dispossessed dwellers of their valuables.
It was gathered that residents, who went
to work at daybreak were the main targets of the
political-thugs-turned-robbers, who reportedly wielded cutlasses, among
other weapons.
Apart from the attacks at dawn, PUNCH Metro learnt that shops in the area had also fallen prey to looting, with owners losing millions of naira.
A resident, who claimed to have witnessed
the incident twice, Sunday Adeyemi, said he escaped by a whisker on
Wednesday while he was going to his office in Ikeja. He added that a
lady was not lucky on the fateful day as the gang snatched her bag.
He said, “We were about four passing
through the street around 6am on Wednesday. All of a sudden, the robbers
ordered us to stop. We fled, but they chased us. The lady fell to the
ground and that was how they were able to collect her bag. When we met
again at Iyana School bus stop, she said her phones and N 7,000 were
inside the bag.
“On Thursday around the same time, I
narrowly escaped again. I saw them from afar and hid somewhere. They
were six in number. A girl was going to buy recharge cards when they
attacked her. They escaped through Aliu Street.”
Another resident, who identified himself
only as Bukola, said the robbers were thugs used by politicians during
the electioneering.
“They (the robbers) are the same set of
people that caused trouble in the community during the political
campaign. Now, they have resorted to robbery after the elections. We
cannot walk around confidently again, particularly early in the
morning,” he said.
Lamenting the incident, a landlord in the
area, Muritala Akinyemi, said a man was equally robbed on Tuesday and
injured by the gang. Akinyemi, who is also the welfare secretary of
Orisigun Oja Oba Community Development Association, said robbery had
been thriving in the community for years, but took a new dimension after
the 2015 general elections.
He said “Around 6am on Tuesday, a young
man ran into the mosque that he had been robbed of his money and phone.
We contributed N200 for him to take a bus to his place of work. The
robbers have been operating on the street for more than five years now.
Sometimes, policemen patrol this area, but nobody has been arrested so
far.”
The vice chairman of the association,
Chief Musbau Akinyemi, urged the police to intervene and put an end to
robbery attacks and cultism in the community.
He said, “We have petitioned the Area H
Command and Alapere Police Station over the incidents, but we have yet
to see any meaningful response from them. We want the police to take
urgent steps to curtail these ugly trends.”
The Lagos State Police spokesperson, DSP
Kenneth Nwosu, enjoined the residents to assist in securing the
community and avail the police of credible information to track down the
miscreants.
He said, “The residents need to provide
us with credible information and actionable intelligence. We will act on
it and get the perpetrators arrested.
“They should also put in place some
vibrant neighbourhood watch programmes to protect the community. Common
sense shows that for those miscreants to rob at daybreak, they must be
residents of the area.”
Source:Punch Newspaper.
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