We were arrested because our charms failed us – robbery suspects

Two armed robbery suspects who admitted their involvement in a series of house-to-house robberies in the Ijanikin, Igando and Ayobo, which are suburbs of the Lagos metropolis, said the police were able to arrest them because the efficacy of their charms failed when it mattered most.  The suspects, Adigun Gbolahan, 19, and Tobi Michael, were […]

Two armed robbery suspects who admitted their involvement in a series of house-to-house robberies in the Ijanikin, Igando and Ayobo, which are suburbs of the Lagos metropolis, said the police were able to arrest them because the efficacy of their charms failed when it mattered most.

 The suspects, Adigun Gbolahan, 19, and Tobi Michael, were arrested after they and four other members of their gang raided a home at Ayobo.

 The suspects, who said their shelter was the front of wooden stores at the Alaba Rago market, Ojo, confessed they were involved in well over 20 armed robbery operations in the metropolis in the last one year.

 Michael, who is the leader and armourer of the gang, admitted killing a man at Ayobo during an operation.

 He said, “We had gone to rob in a house at Ayobo last Thursday. Six of us went for the operation. It was one Chidi who led us to the house we robbed.  We arrived the house around 10:00p.m. While four of us went into the compound by scaling the fence, two others kept vigil outside. Two of us were armed with guns while the others had cutlasses.

 “When we entered the house, we met a man and his wife in the sitting room. We ordered both of then to lie face down. We went round all the rooms collecting all the valuables we saw. Things we stole included phones, wristwatches, jewelries, laptops and cash.

 “But as we were about to leave the house, the man pounced on me with a cutlass. He took us by surprise because we thought that he would be afraid of doing any such thing. He attacked me with the cutlass and I sustained injury on my head. It was at that moment that I shot him. I did not have to check if he was still alive. I knew he had died because I shot him on the chest. We went out through the same way we came. We sold all the phones at Alaba Rago.”

 Explaining their modus operandi, the suspect said anytime they embarked on a house-to-house raid in the Ijanikin, Igando and Ajangbadi areas and they wanted to be quiet about it, they would just cut open the mosquito net on the windows of potential victims through where they stole phones.

 “We do this successfully because of the belief that a good number of persons leave their phones by the side of their bed when sleeping,” he said.

 On how he got his guns, the suspect said that he bought them from a man at the Alaba Rago market.

 “I bought both of them for N15,000 each. It was after I bought the guns that we started going from area to area robbing people. Before then we were only snatching phones from people in buses,” he said.

 Michael revealed that it was his gang that raided a Naijabet office at Ijanikin where they stole phones, laptops and cash from the operators and customers.

 The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, who paraded the suspects yesterday at the command headquarters, Ikeja, said that two locally made single-barrel guns, two expended cartridges and charms were recovered from them.

 Edgal explained that the police traced the suspects to their hideouts at the Alaba Rago market after they killed a victim at Ayobo.