A middle-aged Islamic scholar has been shot dead by armed robbers who invaded Aleke Village in Imota area of Ikorodu, Lagos, South West Nigeria.
•The late Mallam Abubakar Gbagba.
The body of the victim, Mallam Abubakar Gbagba, was riddled with bullets by three armed robbers who rode a motorcycle and carried out the attack in the early hours.
The robbers, who escaped on the motorcycle after the operation, were apprehended at the next village called Isiwu by a vigilance group in their hideout. They were handed over to the Police at Imota Division.
The first wife of the deceased, Hajia Kuburat, who was with the deceased during the attack allegedly identified a member of the gang at the Imota Police Station.
The man, popularly called ‘Bebo’ was fingered by the woman as the person that shot her husband with a dane gun.
Narrating her ordeal in the hands of robbers, Kuburat said that the bandits mistook the polythene bag stocked with foodstuff bought on Lagos Island, as money and shot her husband in the chest when he told them he had no money.
“The three armed robbers broke into our house around 2.10 a.m. and shot my husband after they broke the doors. They later demanded for money and pointed their gun at my little daughter’s head before they took all the money in my husband’s pocket.
“When they were going, I pursued them to where the three of them climbed the Okada and I started shouting for help to assist my shot husband,” she stated.
Some of the vigilance group members who made statements at Imota Police Station disclosed that “all of us heard the gun shots since it was dead in the night and one of us who saw them returning with a bike to our village, Isiwu trailed them to their hideout and alerted us. We, along with other residents, surrounded their house and threatened to burn down the house if they did not come out.
“It was a big surprise to us that some of our members that were sent to Imota police station have not yet returned, but we saw a team of policemen from Shagamu police station, Ikorodu who accused us of beating the robbers and threatened to shoot us if we don’t give them medical treatment immediately,” a member of the vigilance group lamented.
“We were also surprised when one of the armed robbers, called Bebo, called the policemen to see what they have done to him while a policeman called Yemi threatened to deal with us if we failed to give him medical treatment immediately despite the fact that we told him that the robbers have just shot somebody dead.”
According to them, “it was the arrival of the police team from Imota Police station, led by the Chief Security Officer, Ibrahim that saved us from Yemi and his team who hurriedly left the place and disappeared.”
Confirming the arrest of the bandits, the Divisional Police Officer, DPO, of Imota Police Station, Mr. David Etim said the police had been on the gang’s trail for sometime and was happy that they were apprehended, adding that other victims of the gang’s recent attacks had started coming to the station to identify them.
It was also gathered that the gang recently invaded a church (name withheld) where they made away with N500,000, raped some female members of the church and later went to another house in the village to rob an old woman and raped her.
Meanwhile, the remains of the slain scholar has been released to the family by the police and buried near his house at Aleke according to Islamic rites. The robbery suspects would soon be transferred to the State Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS.
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