I Embraced Robbery After I Lost N900,000 To Fraudsters - Robbery Suspect

Okike and Aja at the station ... yesterday

A 26-year-old man, Chekube Aja, is claiming that he took to armed robbery to avenge his loss to fraudsters.

Aja told the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARs), Lagos Police Command in Ikeja that he lost N1.2 million to some fraudulent travel agents in South Africa, where he lived for two years.

He said when he was trying to get his papers, someone offered to help him get a wife to facilitate his residence permit.

“I paid the person N300,000, but at the end of the day, he ran away with my money; that was how I returned to Nigeria,” he said.

Later, he moved to Brazil, where he lost N900,000 to fraudsters who promised to link him to drug barons so that he could become a carrier. The effort, he said, failed and he returned to Nigeria with nothing.

The suspect said when his cloth business at Wuse Market in Abuja was not moving, he began to snatch cars which he sold to a buyer, who he simply identified as Chinedu, now at large.

“I was snatching and selling small cars to him, but one day, I took a Golf car to him. He declined to pay, saying that he wanted me to upgrade and be snatching big cars. The Golf was worth N300,000, but he gave me a Baretta pistol instead. He said I should use it to dream big,” Aja said.

After supplying Chinedu with six cars valued at N2million, he said he relocated to his Udi, Enugu State home town, to set up a liquor joint.

He said early this year, his cousin, Sunday Okike (28), persuaded him to come to Lagos and make money with his pistol. But he declined, saying he could be caught.

Aja said: “A week after Okike left the village, I came to Lagos and joined him in our first operation. A man was driving into his compound in Egbeda and we trailed him. We robbed him of N500,000 and shared it. I was involved in other operations; it was after the fifth operation that I was caught. We snatched an End of Discussion Honda car and as I was taking it out of Lagos to Abuja to deliver to Chinedu, I was arrested on the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway.

Okike, who deals in carpets at 12, Orptal Street on LASU Road, Igando, a Lagos suburb, said he went into robbery to improve on his business.

Okike lamented that after serving his boss for five years, he was settled with only N300,000. He said after he rented a shop, he had only N100,000 to invest in the business.

The suspect, who is the only son of his aged mother, admitted that he was the person that brought the pistol to Lagos and took Aja to areas the rich and middle-class live.

Detectives trailed the suspects following the victim’s distress call which was received by Commissioner of Police Umar Manko.

Following Manko’s directive, the officer in charge of SARS, Abba Kyari, a Superintendent of Police (SP), arrested Aja with a Honda car marked KJA 321 AV.

The suspect took the detectives to where they arrested Okike.

“A Baretta pistol marked C97421Z, with 11 rounds of live ammunition and about six phone sets were recovered in a bag which he hid in the ceiling of his room,” the police said.