Stolen car gives away daring carjackers
February 4, 2012 by Comfort Oseghale Leave a Comment

The law finally caught up with three suspected members of a gang of notorious armed robbers on Jan 9, 2012. This was after a stolen Honda Odyssey was discovered parked outside a bar in the Obalende area of Lagos.

The suspects – Adekunle Akin, 23, Segun Bello, 24, and Abiodun Adedeji, 23 – were alleged to be members of a six-man gang that specialised in carjacking. The leader of the gang, one Yinusa, is currently at large.

CRIME DIGEST learnt that the end of the road came for the criminals after they trailed the owner of the car to her home in Ajah and robbed her. Some of the items stolen during the operation included expensive jewellery and a laptop computer.

Recounting the incident to our correspondent, Akin said, “I was in my house at Ifo in Ogun State when Yinusa called me for a ‘job’ at Ajah and asked me to meet him at Obalende. It wasn’t as if we had a target in mind that we were going to rob; we were to roam the area for a target.

“When I got to Obalende Road, I met Yinusa there with two other members of the gang, Seyi and Yusuf. Bello and Adedeji were still on their way. Yinusa had come in a Sienna bus and when the others arrived, we all moved to Ajah.

“On our way to Ajah, we saw a lady driving a Honda Odyssey car and we trailed her to her home in Ajah. We robbed her of the car, jewellery and laptop, after which we went back to Obalende and stopped at a beer parlour to relax.”

The gangsters abandoned the Sienna bus at the residence of their victim and they dispersed. But Yusuf and Seyi, who had gone to eat lunch, returned to the beer parlour.

Unknown to the other members of the gang, a friend of their victim had sighted the Honda Odyssey car and had called the attention of her husband to it.

The commissioner of Police, Lagos State, Mr. Yakubu Alkali told CRIME DIGEST that the robbers had the previous day attacked and shot the owner of the Sienna bus at Abesan Housing Estate in Iyana-Ipaja. Aware that the blood stains on the bullet-riddled car might attract the attention of law enforcement agents, they had decided to snatch the Honda Odyssey and abandon the Sienna bus.

He said, “Luckily for their latest victim, her husband’s friend sighted her car outside a beer parlour at Obalende and immediately called to know what the car was doing there. After the friend got to know that the car had been stolen three hours earlier from its owner, he immediately alerted the neighbourhood Oodua People Congress members, who after some enquiries, traced the car to the four young men who were still at the beer parlour.

“The OPC guys apprehended the four men amongst others, but later released Yusuf and Seyi, along with some others after they identified them as residents of the area. They had no idea that Yusuf and Seyi were robbers. Two guns were recovered from Akin and Adedeji and two more from the stolen Honda Odyssey.”

Akin and Adedeji were later handed over to the police officer in charge of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Superintendent Abba Kyari, who took over the investigation.

However, a SARS team arrested Bello at his Owode home in Ogun State. But the leader of the gang, Yinusa, managed to escape before the law enforcement officers could get there.

The guns seized from the robbers were said to have been procured from a Cotonou businessman, who exchanged arms for stolen cars with Yinusa.

Akin, who had previously worked as a bus conductor, confessed that he participated in four different robbery operations before his arrest.

He says, “Since 2010, I have been involved in four robbery operations. I met Yinusa at a beer parlour in Obalende in December 2009. We struck up a friendship after I dropped him off at Oshodi the next morning; I was working then as a commercial bus driver. It was until some months later that he confided in me that he was a robber.”

Bello, who also worked as a bus driver, met Yinusa under similar circumstances. He says, “I got to know Yinusa last year when he took a ride in my bus; I was driving from Iyana-Ipaja to Oshodi. I was impressed by Yinusa’s style of dressing and we got talking. When I asked what sort of job he did, he told me he was a smuggler on the Badagry-Seme route. We exchanged addresses. Four days later, Yinusa invited me to his house. That was when he confessed his true identity as a robber to me.”

The youngest of the three, Adedeji, was lured into crime by his own colleague, Akin, whom he had known for some time. He says, “After the day’s work, Akin would invite me to join him for a drink; he never seemed to be short of money. This went on three months by which time, I was already curious about his source of wealth. Eventually one night, I wasn’t invited for a robbery operation at Abule Egba. Initially, I wasn’t told beforehand that it was an operation. It was until I had met with them that I knew what I had got into.”