Julius Adegun had on Saturday,
September 21, 2013, boarded a
commercial bus from Abule-Egba, on the
Lagos-Abeokuta Expresssway, around
10.30pm.
He was heading to Iyana-Ipaja but had
no idea he had boarded the bus with a
three-man gang of robbers. The events
that unfolded later were to confound
him because it was one he had never
heard of.
“I had heard of robbers waylaying
people after they had used the ATM
before. I had even heard of people
being ambushed immediately they were
about to use the ATM and forced to
withdraw certain amount of money by
robbers. But I never imagined I would
be a victim of this kind of robbery,” he
said.
He told Saturday PUNCH there were
already nine passengers in the 14-
seater bus apart from the driver as at
the time he boarded.
The bus had moved about 10 minutes
when it got to a bank on the
expressway towards Iyana Ipaja and the
robbers promptly swung into action, he
said.
“One of the robbers, who had posed as
the conductor all along turned towards
us and asked, ‘Hope you all have your
ATM cards?’ He spoke in pidgin. Nobody
seemed to be listening to him because
we did not realise what was happening
at first.
‘Then he said to the driver, ‘Alaye, enter
that bank.’ That was when I started to
connect the dots in my head. We
started protesting, asking why they
would be stopping in front of a bank at
that time of the night.
“Clearly, the driver was a part of the
gang. One of the robbers who had sat
quietly at the back of the bus with one
other passenger shouted at us. He said,
‘Shut up! Just cooperate peacefully and
you will be on your way. He pointed a
locally made pistol at us.”
Adegun said after the robbers had told
them to bring out their ATM cards or
risk being shot, some of them promptly
did. But two passengers – a young man
and a woman – who said they had no
ATM card on them were slapped many
times as they were being searched.
Eventually, five of them had ATM cards
on them at the time.
“One of the robbers took us in turn to
the ATM and asked us to put in our
Personal Identification Numbers. They
withdrew everything that each of us had
in the account.
“I had N43,000 in my account. They first
checked the account balance and
withdrew N40,000. I was initially
praying that the ATM would not work
that day but unfortunately it did.
“The other victims too were robbed of
almost all they had in each of their
accounts. A young man with us actually
said he was supposed to use the
N80,000 in his account to buy tyres for
his boss the following morning. But
everything was withdrawn. He was the
one they robbed of the highest
amount.”
He said they could not raise the alarm
because the robber with the gun
threatened to shoot anyone that
attempted to make any noise.
Asked if they reported to the police
after the robbery, he said after the
robbers took them into a street off the
major road and asked them to
disembark, he immediately called a
police distress line he had on his phone.
“The details of the robbery, the number
of victims, and the description of the
vehicle were taken by the person who
answered the call. The police promised
to alert the patrol team in the area but
I don’t know what happened after that,”
he said.
Asked if he was able to get the vehicle’s
number plate, he said it was too dark
for him to be able to make out the
number.
This method of using commercial buses
seems to make it easier for the robbers
to rob a higher number of people at
once rather than staking out ATM
terminals.
Robberies at ATM are not new in Lagos.
There have been many reports of
ambush at ATM terminals where
customers are asked to withdraw money
at gun points.
A victim, Mr. Funso Aina, told of how he
was once robbed at gun point at the
ATM terminal of a bank on Mobolaji
Bank Anthony Way, Ikeja around
9.30pm on September 23, 2013 when
he was coming back from work.
Aina told Saturday PUNCH, “That night, I
parked and got out but I noticed a
young man at one of the four terminals
at the bank. I actually thought he was
also trying to withdraw money.
“But as soon as I withdrew money, he
pulled out his phone and spoke into it.
He turned to me and put a gun to my
head. He said, ‘Give me the money’ and
grabbed it even before I handed it to
him.
“As that was taking place, another young
man had approached, who must have
been the one the first one was speaking
to on the phone. The second man put a
gun to my side and asked me to
withdraw some money. ‘N50,000!
N50,000!’ he told me.
“But I calmly explained that I would
withdraw the money but they should
understand that I could not withdraw
N50,000 at once. But as I pressed the
buttons on the ATM, one of them
quickly pressed it himself and withdrew
N10,000. As he attempted to withdraw
more money, the ATM stopped
working.”
Aina said the robbers got N20,000 from
him in total. He said they also took away
his BlackBerry phone.
He did not report to the police.
“You know how the police would ask
you to come back everyday; I did not
want such stress. If the robbers took
something sensitive like my identity
card or something of that nature for
example, I would have reported,” he
said.
He said his experience had since made
him wary of using ATM at night.
Spokesperson of the Lagos State Police
Command, Ngozi Braide, said she had
not got a report to indicate if this trend
is on the rise in Lagos.
She said it does not help the police
when victims of crimes do not report
them to the police.
Braide said, “Making reports at the
nearest police station when something
like that happens allows us to have a
record. It also gives us leads to go on
with in our investigation.
“It is always important for victims of
robberies like those in the commercial
bus to try and get the number plates of
the vehicles used by the robbers.
Armed security men are supposed to be
at the banks where these ATMs are
sited.
“Banks should try and put adequate
lighting around their ATMs to discourage
robbers.”
But Aina said he was robbed in a well lit
open ATM gallery.
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