The Abia State Correspondent of THE WHISTLER newspaper, Iro Oliver, was robbed by gunmen in Umuahia over the weekend.
The incident took place on Sunday at Club road (cooperative) before Isigate , at about 10 pm while he was returning from a trip..
Mr Oliver had travelled to Aba earlier in the day and was returning to his base when gunmen accosted him and others, and dispossessed them of their belongings.
Narrating his ordeal, he said, “I travelled with a friend who was getting married to Aba and it happened after the vehicle we boarded dropped us at Umuahia.
“We finished what we went to do around 7pm but we could not see a bus going back to Umuahia so we waited for almost 1 hour before we saw one that agreed to take us to Umuahia.
“The bus finally left Aba by 9pm but due to the multiple check points along the Aba/Enugu expressway we got to Umuahia by 10pm. When we got to Okpara square the bus driver said he will stop us there that he will not take us to the park at Isigate.
“The passengers insisted that he must take us to the last bus stop, and after much arguments he moved a little further and stopped us at cooperative before Isigate.”
It was after the driver dropped them and drove away that the robbers struck.
“A few seconds after the driver drove out a group of boys numbering about six from the “down below” opposite cooperative approached us with guns pointed at me and demanded that I surrender everything that is with me or he would blow up my head,” he said, adding that he quickly surrendered his phone, power bank and the money in his pocket.
The gunmen also robbed other passengers.
“But the funny part of these whole things is that there was a police checkpoint just few poles away from where the robbery happened,” Mr Oliver observed.
He pleaded with the Abia State government to redouble efforts on security by installing streets lights on all the dark spots in Umuahia to save Abians from the hands of hoodlums.
“If there was proper streets lighting at that cooperative side and towards the Okigwe road those arm robbers wouldn’t have had the morale to come out and rob us at that time,” he said.
Mr Oliver said he reported the robbery incident at the Central Police Station, Umuahia.
