A new wave of robbery is spring up in Lagos. They move about in groups and rob both day and night without fear of being caught up with the law.
One thing is common to every member of the group, they are young – all teenagers.
Another thing common to them is that they all belong to cult, and can violently engage rival cult any time, any day.
In their cult fights, civilians caught in the cross-fire are merely unfortunate. They often use pistils.
One of the groups calls itself ‘Million’ because they always look uncountable and intimidating.
They are also into drugs, and marijuana is their commonest product.
Recently a young man, who even buys his marijuana from them was attacked at a popular bus-stop at 8p.m.
Commuters, cars, passers-by and passengers simply watched as the young man was stabbed all over with a pen they took from the victim’s pocket until he surrendered his new phone which they saw with him.
They stabbed him all over his head and almost blinded him. His two eyes were blood-shot for almost two weeks.
Nobody came to victim’s rescue. When he allowed them to take his phone, they left him alone.
Out of the five boys that attacked him he knew three, and he had refused to report them to the police.
He reasoned with people: “These boys know my shop where I work till 10p.m. sometimes, they could attack me again, even kill me if I report them to the Police.”
For now, he had resorted to using N6,000 Nokia phone.
Another victim, a popular ice-cream seller in the area, who before he died, after being stabbed near his heart, with a screw driver, confessed he had been giving money to the juvenile robbers in the past, but on that day he promised to give them another day.
And they got angry and began stabbing him.
This time around was at an unholy hour – 1a.m., and a young man was returning from a club house.
He had just bought a new phone and the robbers asked for it; foolishly he resisted them and they stabbed him all over and even close to his heart again.
He was rushed to the same hospital, where the ice-cream man died. He also died there.
This man’s death pained so many households in Iju-Ishaga area, Lagos, for his humble service of filling and delivering gas cylinders to them at home.
But this female victim was fortunate. The robbers asked for her phone at 5:30 a.m. as she was going to work. She humbly gave it to them and even said, ‘thank you, sir’, to the person who collected it from her.
The boss of the group intervened: “Return the hand-set to her immediately.”
From the narrative, it is a sin to resist armed robbers, who are ready to spill blood any time.
One Nigerian statesman once said, “Never argue with a man with a gun.”
These juvenile robbers use guns, knives, bottles, pen and screw drivers. They can even kill you with their bare hands if you resist them.
