Residents recount ordeal as traffic robbers take over Lagos

Tired out after long hours of business meetings on Lagos Island, Victoria Ese, a company executive, reclined at the backseat of her car as her driver raced through the largely scanty roads. It was about 9 o’clock on a Friday night. The thought of how she would return home to her family occupied her mind.

As the car sped through Costain down to Orile to Suru Alaba on the Lagos-Badagry Expressway en route her Festac Town residence, Ese’s least consideration was the possibility of a violent encounter with armed robbers. The road was not just familiar, it was her everyday route. She and her driver knew it like the back of their hands. Moreover, it was not so late into the night. She was relaxed.

But just after the Army Signals Barracks approaching Mile Two Bridge, the story changed. Her car drove past an apparently abandoned vehicle on the service lane. In front of the vehicle was a similarly abandoned motorcycle lying half onto the road. Then in front of the motorcycle were two vehicles. They created the picture of a collision scene, and they were almost blocking the entire road leaving little or no space for oncoming vehicles to pass. There was intense traffic.

Seeing there was no easy way of manoeuvring out of the situation, Ese asked her driver to engage the reverse gear. Just then, orders were barked at them from all directions.

“Stop there! Wind down!”

The voices must have sounded like a thousand demons inside her head. She was in shock.

“I immediately hid my bag. My driver had his salary that I had just paid him and was determined not to let it go,” she recounted.

“Our resistance was followed with a deafening sound. It was the crash of glasses as splinters flew around. The car windows were gone, alongside some of my personal belongings, my driver’s salary, my wallet which contained very important business contacts and identity cards,” she narrated to BDSUNDAY.

The robbery was over as quickly as it had begun. Everything happened in a flash.

“My plea to have back my wallet was met with a growl from a deep, frightening voice: ‘I will stab you o! You no dey fear?’” Ese said.

Ese’s experience is becoming a common story on Lagos roads in recent times, adding to the city’s not-so-palatable record as the third worst city to drive in, with 60 percent congestion and 10.70mph average speed, according to Forbes.

It seems that after years of commendation for its relative safety, Lagos is back to the old days of violent attacks and traffic armed robbery, with Mile Two, Obalende and CMS topping black spots. These robbers target mainly women and family cars. Each new case seems more daring and violent than the one before it.

John Obi, another victim of a similar attack, told BDSUNDAY that he was returning home from a function with his young family when they were attacked at CMS on Lagos Island.

Narrating his experience, Obi, who said his six-year-old daughter is still frightened, said he had just wound down in traffic to buy water for his son who was sitting at the backseat when two young men showed up and ordered them to hand over all their valuables.

“I pleaded with them to please avoid pointing the knife to my family, but they barked out orders endlessly and sped away after collecting my phones and those of my wife,” he said.

Another Lagosian, who gave his name simply as Cosmas, said he had experienced a similar robbery operation on the Oshodi-Oke Bridge.

Just last Friday, one of the guests at a business luncheon in Victoria Island narrated how he was dispossessed of his valuables at about 6.00 p.m. on Ozumba Mbadiwe Road while stuck in a traffic jam. In the presence of his driver, a man pointed a gun at him and made away with his phones.

“Just like that, in broad daylight. It was like a film scene,” he narrated to his friends who related the story to our correspondent.