Posted by Emmanuel Ogunsakin on
Calabar, the Canaan City, the neatest metropolis in Nigeria and centre of tourism, has become the deadliest city where it is now suicidal to walk around with GSM phones after 7 P.M.
Calabar, the Canaan City, the neatest metropolis in Nigeria and centre of tourism, has become the deadliest city where it is now suicidal to walk around with GSM phones after 7 P.M. These days, marauding gangs of GSM phone thieves inflict deep machete cuts on victims in order to dispossess them of their handsets.
I had lived peacefully in Calabar since May 2000 without any untoward experience until the night of 30th July 2005, when, at about 9.30 P.M., while taking a walk around First Avenue in the highbrow state housing estate, a bike stopped beside me and two armed young men, in commando style, demanded for my handset.
Unfortunately for me, I left my phone at home. This infuriated the thieves and they inflicted a deep machete cut on my head.
I made for the closest hospital, when I woke up from a temporary coma, where emergency stitching was carried out on my head.
Several residents of the hitherto peaceful city have one story or the other to tell on their encounter with the GSM phone robbery syndicate in Calabar city.
Indeed, several residents have lost their limbs to the rampaging gang that shows no mercy to anyone without a handset, or whoever resists them.
I appeal to the Cross River State Government to do something about this ugly trend.
Emmanuel Ogunsakin,
Calabar,
Cross River State.
The PUNCH, Monday, December 05, 2005