CONFESSION OF A BETRAYING NEPHEW - How I led a robbery gang to steal my uncle’s jeep

Oluwaseun Olalekan, (right) who invited the two
robbery suspects (on the left) to his uncle’s
residence.In this interview with Adelowo Oladipo, a robbery suspect, Oluwaseun Olalekan, disclosed how he led a robbery gang to rob his uncle, though unsucessfully, of his Range Rover jeep at his Lagos home.

What is your name and what led to your arrest?
My names are Olanrewaju Oluwaseun Olalekan, a Nigerian from Ode-Remo in Ogun State and I am 22 years old. Well, all I can remember now is that on my way to Ode-Remo, Ogun State, from Ojota motorpark in Lagos recently, I boarded a commercial bus with an elderly man, who later introduced himself to me as Imole Opeyemi. During the journey we chatted and discussed many things relating to our individual life experiences.

Thereafter, I told him where I came from and that I am a production apprentice living in a house belonging to an elder brother of my mother, Alhaji Ganiyu Muritala, a United States-based businessman. I also remembered that I told him that my uncle has a number of Jeeps parked inside his Lagos residence close to the popular Owode Onirin Market on Lagos-Ikorodu Expressway, on the outskirts of Lagos.

 What was his response to the information you gave him in the bus?
He immediately asked me about the brand of the Jeeps owned by my uncle, and I responded that they are many, and that among the state-of-the-art vehicles was a Range Rover Jeep. He asked me if I could get both the keys and the documents of the Range Rover  and I answered in the affirmative. All through my discussions with him, I was freely giving him information which I ought not to have disclosed to him. I  think he must have used some extraordinary diabolical powers to extract the information from me because I had never been a talkative until that fateful day.

 I also remembered that no sooner had he instructed me to get the key and the car’s particulars than I returned to Lagos immediately and I went straight to  where those items were kept, and I took it to him at Ode-Remo the following day, at a designated area where he said I should meet him.

What happened thereafter?
After he had collected both the car key and the documents, he promised to get a gun and his foot soldiers for the robbery operation. He gave me the names of his robbery gang members as one Tunde Ogunbanwo and Mufutau Nurudeen.

The man, Opeyemi, who is now on the run, specifically, on April 1, 2008  came to my residence at Ode-Remo Ogun State between the hours of 6a.m. to 7a.m. and woke me up because I was still sleeping at the time he visited my place.

He, thereafter, instructed that I should go back to Lagos and be prepared to assist the two young men, who he said would be coming to remove the car from my uncle’s garage, where it was parked in the compound.

And without any argument with him, I picked one of my dresses, wore it, and he thereafter gave me a bag containing a gun to be used for the operation at my uncle’s residence in Lagos.

On my arrival in Lagos, I discovered that the elderly man who I later learnt was a robbery kingpin, was monitoring my movements with his G.S.M. handset. I later kept the bag containing the gun at the back of an uncompleted building on our street at Offa Crescent, behind Owode Onirin Market.

On the same day, at about 6 p.m, his emissaries called me on their phones that they were already within Ikorodu township and they later found their way to our residence through the address I gave them.

I was gripped with fear and I quickly closed the gates of our expansive compound at about 8 p.m, barely two hours after receiving the two robbery gangs telephone call.

At about 10 p.m, the two people who were also arrested with me called that I should come and open the gate, so that they could gain entry into our compound, but I refused to heed their instructions so that I would not be exposed on  my devilish act to my relations.

What happened thereafter?
Mr. Opeyemi Imole, popularly known as Jagangbade furnituremaker and music promoter in Ode-Remo, Ogun State, called and threatened to deal with me, if I failed to co-operate with his people who had arrived in Lagos for the robbery operation.

But I did not hear anything again from any of them until I went to bed later in the night of April 1, 2008. The following day at about 6:25 a.m, both Mufutau and Ogunbanwo forced their ways into our compound and came to meet us upstairs and held us hostage.

They collected my phone and those of my other relations living in the house, armed with a gun. One of my uncles, Isiaka Muritala, begged that the one holding the gun should please remove his sim card from the phone collected and give it to him.

The boy obliged him. As he was in the process of removing the sim card, my uncle, Isiaka sprang up and gripped the boy’s hand with the gun and brought him down on the floor.

Thereafter, he raised an alarm and the people in the neighbourhood quickly  came into our compound to rescue us from the two-man robbery gang. It was at that stage that one of them, after being seriously beaten by the irate mob, opened up and said that I led them into the house to carry out the robbery operation.

Members of the O’dua Peoples Congress (OPC) engaged by the Landlords Association in the area to maintain security on the street, later teamed up with the police to beat the three of us almost into a state of coma. We were arrested and taken to the Lagos State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Yaba for further investigation.