Two robbery suspects mobbed, set ablaze in Benin

The absence of the police and other security agencies has started taking its toll on Edo State as angry residents mobbed and set ablaze two armed robbery suspects in Benin City, the state capital.

It would be recalled that since the #EndSARS protest had taken violent turn on October 19, leading to the burning of seven police stations in the state, men of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) who carry out regular security activities, had tactically withdrawn their services notwithstanding the directive by the Inspector General of Police to the contrary.

The rising level of criminal activities, especially robbery and carjacking, had made the state governor, Godwin Obaseki, to approach the Edo State Police Command to plead with the officers and men of the Command to return to the streets to help to stem the wave of crime and criminality in the state.

But barely after 24 hours Governor Obaseki made the appeal, some angry residents on Tuesday morning lynched the two suspected armed robbers and set them ablaze.

Tribune Online gathered that the two suspected robbers were apprehended near Okah Market, by the Ighodefeyi Road along Sokponba Road, Benin City, where they were beaten with clubs and other dangerous items, and thereafter set ablazed. The mob, mainly youths, were believed to be members of Ighodefeyi and Upper Sokponba communities.

According to an eye witness account, the suspects were said to have come out early in the morning and started to rob people and dispossess them of their valuables before luck ran out on them.

“They came out early in the morning and they were robbing market women going to the market and other early risers going to their workplaces. There have been regular cases of a robbery around Sokponba Road here because the three police stations along this road namely St Saviour, Ugbegun and Idogbo have been burnt and destroyed. There is no single presence of police post or any other security agency here,” the eyewitness recalled.

Hours later after the Upper Sokponba mob action, another suspected armed robber was almost mobbed when he went into the banking hall of a new generation bank along Sapele Road, Benin, and took two bales of N200,000 behaving like a staff of the bank.

A eagle-eyed woman customer was said to have noticed the strange behaviour of the suspect and alerted the people around, who apprehended the suspect.

When searched, two knives were recovered from him and he was rescued by the bank security and later taken to the Edo State Police Command.

Also, on Akenzua Street, by Brother Pius Nursery and Primary School, a young lady operating a Point of Sale (PoS) shop, where people deposit and also collect money, was shot by some gunmen, believed to be armed robbers, when she resisted them as they wanted to forcefully collect cash from her.

The lady was said to have thrown all the money on her to a nearby bush and made for one of the gun-wielding men before she was shot point-blank on the neck.

This was just as a Toyota Camry car was reportedly snatched at gunpoint along Mission Road on Sunday around 5 pm while another Toyota Corrola car was snatched by Uwasota in Ugbowo the same day.

The Benin-Ekpoma Road has become a no-go area as armed robbers, kidnappers and other criminal elements have taken the advantage of the absence of policemen on that route to operate with reckless abandon.

Obaseki had while appealing to the police to return to their duty posts, promised to rebuild the burnt police stations, pay the medical bills of officers and men injured and purchase patrol vehicles for the Command.

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