‘One-Chance robbers pushed me out of car after collecting N800k’

Miss Folashade Ajakaiye has narrated how she was abducted by suspected one-chance robbers and later pushed out of a car after the criminals used a POS machine to collect the sum of N800,000 from her family and friends in Abuja. Ajakaiye, a pedicurist, told Abuja Metro on Sunday that the incident happened on Thursday after […]

Miss Folashade Ajakaiye has narrated how she was abducted by suspected one-chance robbers and later pushed out of a car after the criminals used a POS machine to collect the sum of N800,000 from her family and friends in Abuja.

Ajakaiye, a pedicurist, told Abuja Metro on Sunday that the incident happened on Thursday after she boarded a taxi in the Wuse II area of Abuja.

She said she had left a customer’s home around 4:30 p.m. and was on her way to Wuse Market to board another vehicle to her residence in Lugbe.

“Customers usually invite me to their homes for pedicures, which I have been doing for over two years now. It was on Thursday, after I left one of my customers’ houses and was on my way back to Lugbe, that I suddenly ran into the hands of one-chance robbers,” she said.

She explained that she was standing by the roadside when a vehicle stopped and signaled that it was heading towards Wuse Market. She noticed an elderly man sitting in the front with the driver, and another man sitting in the back seat.

According to her, shortly after she boarded the taxi, as they were getting to Nitel Junction, the vehicle diverted from its normal route. Immediately, the man in the back seat grabbed her neck and pushed her down to the floor of the vehicle.

She said the man pinned her down and started beating her, and she realized there was no help coming, even though she screamed, because of the vehicle’s tinted windows.

She said the other man in the front seat pushed his seat backward to further trap her, and the gang tortured her with a hard object for almost four hours as they drove around without stopping.

“As they drove me inside the tinted vehicle around the town, they later used my phone to randomly call some of my family members to transfer N5 million to them and threatened that they would kill me,” she said.

She said she started crying and begged the suspects to spare her life. Eventually, one of the gang members brought out a POS machine and, after receiving about N800,000, they drove toward the Kubwa axis and dropped her off.

“It was after they had collected about N800,000 that the driver told his colleagues to release me. They then dropped me off along a roadside in the Kubwa axis when it was already dark and sped off,” she said.

Ajakaiye, who showed images of the scars on her body, said she gives glory to God that she is still alive. She urged security agencies to rise to the occasion to tackle the activities of one-chance robbers in the nation’s capital.

The spokesperson of the FCT police command, SP Adeh Josephine, did not answer calls regarding the incident.