‘We pretended to be Okada riders to rob bank customers’

Ferdinand Nwachukwu, 32, one of the seven suspects recently arrested for robbing bank customers in Makurdi, Benue State, narrated how they roamed around bank vicinities, pretending to be either commercial motorcyclists or mechanics, and would cunningly divert the attention of unsuspecting bank customers in order to snatch their money.

“I will tell the truth,” he said at the police headquarters, “We used to steal money. We patrolled bank vicinities on motorcycles to monitor customers who came out of banks with huge sums of money. We would trail them with our motorcycles to certain points where we drew their attention to their tyres.

“As soon as they alighted from the vehicle to find out what went wrong, one of us would engage them in a conversation while the other would open the car and quickly flee with their money,” Nwachukwu said.

He was recently apprehended alongside other members of his gang by the police in Benue State for robbing bank customers in Makurdi metropolis.

Nwachukwu, popularly known as Dogo and the other suspects which included one Amos Nembr who claimed to be a Supervisor of Public Utility and Environmental Sanitation in the office of the Senior Special Adviser to Governor Samuel Ortom on Public Utility, supposedly played various roles in dispossessing innocent people of their money.

Others included Ike Chubuike, Terna Yisam, Fanen Hembe and two others whose name were not given.

Nembr told Daily Trust at the police headquarters in Makurdi that he was implicated by Nwachukwu and Chubike after he exposed them.

According to Nembr, they forcefully took away his car on a certain Thursday night after they lured him to a drinking joint on the guise of discussing a business with him so he reported them to the police who arrested them and recovered the vehicle that night.

He however confessed that the said car became his following the inability of Nwachukwu’s brother who originally owned the car to pay him the remaining debt of N400, 000 out N500, 000 which he incurred as a result of using his property to obtain the money to bail two of their relatives from prison.

But, Nwachukwu dismissed the testimony of Nembr, saying he lied and had falsely obtained the car from his brother, one Chibuike, now residing in the Southeast on the guise that the vehicle was confiscated by the police over a crime.

The 32-year-old father of six children recalled how he had for the past five years shuttled between Makurdi and Onitsha to rob people, particularly bank customers, because he had no one to help him establish the trade he learnt.

He explained that the illegal business was what first brought him to Makurdi in 2012, though he still resides in Onitsha while his wife and six children live in Owerri. He occasionally went to Makurdi to strike alongside some of the suspects and out of the proceeds, he gave “honorarium” to Nembr who made him and others to believe that he was a police officer.

“I have known Nembr since 2012, we did business and gave him money. He was always posing as a police officer. It was under that guise that he collected Chibuike’s car since 2015 and refused to return it to him. He changed the plate number and has been using the car which got me angry to the point that I called Chibuike who has returned to the Southeast, to come to Makurdi and see things for himself.

“We lied to him that there was business to do so we brought him to a drinking joint because we wanted to collect the car. We don’t owe him any money. He knows what we did and we gave him money regularly. It was after we succeeded in collecting the car from him that he called the police on us. So I opened up to the police about the matter,” he added.

Nwachukwu stated further that Yisam and Hembe who are motorcycle mechanics came into the picture after noticing the illegal activities from their shops located near the bank as they stole from a bank customer, so in order to persuade them to cover up, they usually dropped money for them while on their usual illegal patrols.

Meanwhile, Yisam and Hembe admitted sighting Nwachukwu and his accomplice robbing a bank customer but denied any conversation with them thereafter or collecting any money apart from the N2000 they (Nwachukwu and an accomplice) once threw at them and fled.

On his part, Chibuke, who upon his deportation from Greece in 2012, joined the gang in Makurdi to rob bank customers, pleaded with the police to be lenient with him as he had since repented and now earns a living doing legal aluminium business in Owerri until he was called to reclaim his car in Makurdi.

Chibuike however admitted that in the past, sometimes in 2015, he went to Makurdi particularly to look for the business of snatching other people’s cars during which process he met Nembr who probably had caught them in the act and demanded N700, 000 to let them off the hook.

“The job we got was N150, 000 but Nembr demanded N700,000. He just held us to ransom and took away my car on that pretext. So we have been giving him money. Whether we worked or not, he collected money from us. He lied to us that he was a police officer and that the car was parked at the police station.

“The car, a green Range Rover, was all I had after my deportation from Greece and Nembr had held unto it since 2015. At a point, I left Benue for the east and subsequently settled for a legal business in aluminium and quit robbery. He even threatened me when I called to let him know that I was coming to Makurdi for the car after Nwachukwu alerted me that he was using it,” Chubike, a father of two explained.

He told our correspondent that Nembr’s version of the story was completely false as there was no other transaction outside the illegal deal that connected them.

Meanwhile, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) for the Benue command, Moses Joel Yamu, said upon conclusion of further investigation into the matter, the seven suspects would be charged to court accordingly.