This profiles one of the prominent
armed robbers in the South-Western part of Nigeria who eluded security operatives over the years and freely killing others on his trail.
When Lawrence Anini,
the Edo State born kingpin and arguably Nigeria's most talked about
bandit of the 80s, was at the peak of his reign, little did he know that
several years later, a successor would take up the mantle and dwarf
anything he ever did.
Up came 36-years-old
Abiodun Egunjobi, alias
Godogodo,
who rose from being a slum boy to the leader of a gang that defied all
reasons, struck with precision, killed without mercy and terrorised
Lagos and the south west with reckless abandon.
Before his arrest on August 1, 2013, Godogodo, also known as the
one-eyed assassin, gave the Lagos State Police Command so much headache
for 14 years, so much so that on the day he was arrested, the command
erupted in joy: at least its men would be safe from his guns.
Originally from Ogun State, Egunjobi was on the wanted list of the
police for over 10 years and the way he managed to evade the police
still legendary. In fact, he was at a time, on the top of the Most
Wanted list of the Command with several Police Commissioners assigning
the toughest of cops on his trail.
Abiodun Egunjobi, alias Godogodo
At that time, any robbery in Lagos had the imprint of Godogodo,
with him leading or one of his boys being responsible. He was famed for
leading many robbery operations, especially on banks, with the infamous
reputation of killing over 100 policemen in Lagos State
.
Godogodo allegedly went for operations with a bag containing 10 fully
loaded AK 47 rifles with 30 rounds of ammunition each and as such, he
was fully prepared in terms of weapons on his back.
It was gathered that Godogodo used to tell his gang members that he
would never be arrested alive and had vowed to go down with as many
policemen as possible on the day he is unable to escape arrest.
See a video of how the police jubilated about his capture:
This vow was later found to be real, as anti-robbery detectives
recovered several loaded AK47s, each with 60 rounds of live ammunition,
from different parts of his residence, including the kitchen, bedroom,
bathroom, sitting room on the day of his arrest.
He was so good at disguising his criminal activities that even his
wife and family members never knew what he was into. He had six houses
in different locations including Lagos, Ogun and Ondo States, and never
stayed in a particular location for more than a month.
He had over 52 fish ponds and passed for a successful businessman,
respected by all. he never drank, smoked, womanised nor socialised,
portraying himself as a very responsible family man, but deep down, he
was as deadly as a mamba.
In the beginning
Godogodo began his voyage into the deadly world of crime after
spending seven years in prison for what he considered a minor offence.
As a scrap dealer in the slum of Gatankowa, Abule-Egba, he was involved
in a fight and the police arrested him. With no one to bail him out,
Godogodo was sent to jail and in his mind, he believed his going to
prison was an injustice and blamed the police for it.
While in prison, he became acquainted with more deadly armed robbers
and formed an alliance with them and took time to understudy them. When
he finally left prison, he decided that he was going to deal with the
police for sending him to prison for seven years.
As a precursor to actualising his decision, he took some time to
study the psyche of an average policeman and used the result to build an
effective strategy that helped him evade arrest for so long. This also
made it possible for him to maintain an air of invincibility among his
gang members. Many of them believed he had magical powers that enabled
him disappear whenever he wanted.
During his interrogation, Godogodo told the police that he took only
raw cash during his operations and would only attack a place he knew
there would be enough cash to cart away. He also said he doesn’t have
any bank account as he invested all his money in property immediately
after each operation.
Reign of terror
Abbey Godogodo visited many Lagosians with sorrow, tears and blood.
Many would not forget Sunday, September 9, 2012, when he and his gang
terrorised the state and left indelible marks in the minds of many
families, after he led a coordinated attack in the city where many
innocent people including policemen lost their lives.
He revealed how he coordinated the bloody operation and gave
chilling details of how he led members of his gang to cart away millions
of dollars from bureau de change operators in Agege and Gbagada areas
of Lagos.
According to Godogodo:
“On that fateful day, I called one of my boys, Sayeed Omolopa, to
meet me at Alfa Beach in Ajah, and some other boys led by Kasali and
Ejike. They were about seven and my boys were five. Yemi Boss, who came
with Ejike, said we should go to Agege and rob some bureau de change
operators.
The agreement was that everyone will get what he lays his hands on.
We used two vehicles and over nine AK-47 rifles. When we got to Agege,
some bureau de change operators that saw us ran to us thinking we wanted
to change money and we opened fire on them and ran into their shops to
pack all the money we found.
In fact, we robbed from shop to shop and we also shot sporadically to
scare people. We shot at people who tried to block the road and prevent
us from moving.
I can’t count the number of people killed in that operation. Wherever
people tried to block the road, we opened fire on them. The boys that
went with me for that job were notorious, they were difficult to control
but they all feared me.
We made a lot of money from the operation. While we were trying to
escape, we met a team of policemen attached to the Rapid Response Squad,
RRS, and we thought they were after us.
On approaching them, we opened fire on the van and killed all the
police in it and collected their rifles and escaped through
Lagos-Abekuta road. Money was not shared after the operation because
everyone took whatever he was able to grab.
When I got home I realised that I made over N500,000, but some days
later, I was informed that one of my boys, Tosin, made over N6 million
from the operation.
Everybody made a lot of money from the operation. I didn’t border to
read the newspapers the next day to know the extent of damage but I knew
many people lost their lives in that operation.
You know, as robbers, we do not go for operations to kill but we kill when we don’t have option.
On our way, we spotted some policemen at Oko-Oba police station, they
didn’t know that we were robbers. We killed them before collecting
their rifles.
Some few months later, we snatched a white Range Rover Sport in Ikeja and two of the occupants escaped with their phones.
We suspected that they were going to call the police. On arriving
Agidingbi Road, we spotted two RRS men on a motorbike and we thought
they were coming after us. We slowed down, by the time they got very
close to us, I opened the window and fired rapid shots at them, they
fell into the gutter with their motorbike and I sent my boys to get
their rifles before we drove off.
When we got to Coca-Cola junction, there was serious traffic and we
decided to make a turn. When we got to the spot where the policemen
fell, we saw some people who were trying to help them and my boys opened
fire on them again.
We managed to make our way to Medical Road, close to Computer
Village, but by then, the policemen there had received message of our
operations and the moment they sighted us, they opened fire and damaged
our tyres.
We managed the tyres up to Capitol Road. There was traffic and I came
out of my vehicle to clear the traffic and there was this Toyota Camry
following us.
I didn’t know that there was an armed mobile policeman in it. When I
returned I discovered that Kasali was struggling with the mobile
policeman who was carrying a rifle.
I fired some shots at the policeman. He attempted to run away, I
chased him and killed him on the spot before picking his rifle. We
snatched another vehicle and abandoned the Range Rover Sport before we
escaped.”
Such was his his ferocious reign of terror.
His arrest
The Lagos State Police Command led by the then Commissioner, Umar
Manko, mandated the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), led by
Superintendent of Police, Abba Kyari, to bring an end to the reign of
Abbey Godogodo and that began intensive investigations which led to the
capitulation of his empire.
The then Commissioner, Umar Manko
Manko was given direct orders by the then Inspector General of Police
to make sure the Godogodo phenomenon was quashed at all costs.
After the gang attacked the Murtala Mohammed International Airport,
where two police inspectors and more than five people were killed and
over N100 million stolen, the police decided to focus on profiling the
suspect, because, up to that point, no one knew anything about him or
what he looked like. The police also began looking at the possibility of
preempting his subsequent operations.
The detectives got a lucky break when a robbery, which fitted into
the established modus operandi of Godogodo’s gang, was reported at a
branch of First Bank in Ilorin, Kwara State and on obtaining the close
circuit television recording of the operation, his image was then known.
Also, most of his gang members arrested were shown the video and they
all agreed that the man in it was indeed the One-eyed bandit and that
brought the police a few steps closer to their target.
The investigation led the police to Dubai where he went often to buy goods for his boutique, all in a bid to get their man.
The CP spoke of their breakthrough:
“After we located his house in Ibadan, we mounted surveillance around
the house for 14 days, before we finally struck and got him. Most of
his colleagues that we had arrested would tell us that the man had the
powers to disappear.
He also used to tell them that anytime it became clear that he was
going to be arrested, it was his dead body that the police would pick.
And before he was killed, he would kill as many policemen as he could.
So, we were very conscious of that warning.
The operation took us about seven months before we finally got him
that early morning. Even, on that day, after we had identified the
house, policemen waited there for more than 11 hours
.
We didn’t go in and nobody came out of the place. But we remained
patient and continued to consider our options carefully until he
eventually came out. And to prove the point of what he used to tell his
colleagues, we recovered six AK47 rifles in his kitchen, his bedroom,
and toilets, everywhere.
And each rifle had double magazines attached to it; which means that in each rifle, he had about 60 rounds of live ammunition.”
Source:onlinenigeria
