Posted by By JULIANA FRANCIS on
A driver with The Sun Publishing Limited, who recently had an encounter with men of the underworld in the Oshodi area of Lagos, has narrated how he almost died when he looked straight into the nozzle of a pistol pointed at him by one of the bandits.
A driver with The Sun Publishing Limited, who recently had an encounter with men of the underworld in the Oshodi area of Lagos, has narrated how he almost died when he looked straight into the nozzle of a pistol pointed at him by one of the bandits.
The victim, Chima Ogwo, said: 'I died hundred times over. As long as I live, I will never forget that night."
He said what happened to him on March 17, was like a scene from a movie. According to him, when he sighted the gun, he became weak and confused.
And when one of the four robbers shattered the windscreen of his bus with the butt of the gun, he thought the end had come. He, however, came out of his daydream when he heard, ' where is your handset? Bring that bag!"
He said: 'When I saw that gun, fear gripped me. I didn't know what I was doing. Fear, the kind I had never experienced before, gripped me. I've never experienced that sort of situation before in my life! Someone pointing a gun at my head. He could blast it off at any time. I've heard of robberies before. In fact, several times, but never expected that I would find myself in that situation."
Ogwo said he would have died on that fateful day if not for prayers. According to him, God had revealed the impending danger to him. Few days before the incident, Ogwo said he dreamt of corpses at an accident scene. He said he woke up and prayed fervently against any spirit of death hovering around him.
'Two days after that, a pastor told me he dreamt about me. He told me that the manner in which he saw me in his dream was terrible. He advised me to pray. It was a revelation from God. If not for prayers, perhaps, I would have been a dead man by now."
Recalling the incident, Ogwo said it was few minutes before 8pm when he ran into a traffic hold-up at Oshodi, as he was heading for Mile 2. Along the way, he had picked two staffers of The Sun, who were supposed to be on night duty. He said he was on the speed lane when four motorbikes, each with passengers suddenly appeared.
He said: 'The passengers got down, but the riders stayed put. Immediately, they jumped down, they split. One robbed the third vehicle in front of me. I became numb with shock. There was no way we could drive forward or backward. If I ran, they might have shot to kill. Not knowing what else to do, I wound up the windows."
Like one caught in a trance, he and his passengers watched the unfolding drama until one of the robbers got to them. He said: 'The robber said I should open the door, I said we didn't have anything. He insisted I should wind down. He brought out a pistol and hit the windscreen with the butt. He used the butt again to finally shatter it. His first words were, 'where is your handset?" I gave him. He asked for my money, I said I didn't have any.
'He asked one of the staffers for his handset. One had, but the other didn't. The one that didn't have was a part-time student. The robber collected his school bag, filled with books. As they were taking those things from their victims, they were handing them over to the bike riders."
Ogwo said the funny aspect of the incident was that hawkers were still busy selling their wares while vehicle owners pretended not to have seen people being robbed.
He advised the police to embark on a regular search of commercial bike riders, popularly called okada. According to him, most of them are robbers, who use the business to cover up their nefarious activities. Although, Ogwo is grateful to God for sparing his life, he is bemoaning the fact that he had not finished paying for the handset the robbers collected from him.