We were three in the group, but only two of us have been arrested.
My sister, I will tell you the truth, at first I did not want to join them in this armed robbery because they are very bad boys.
So this is what happened.
Gbome, we call him Hammer, that is the name of our leader, he is the one who got all of us together; he is also the one who carries the gun whenever we go to operate. But it was Whistle who told us that there is one easy job we can all do, he was the one who told us about the old couple, he said that we could just go there, rob them and we will not have any problem at all.
Me, I am a welder, I have been a welder for just two years, I was first an apprentice at Baba Agbede’s workshop for two years and after my freedom, I started my own welding business. But business has not been good, people will owe you for weeks even for simple jobs. They will trick you into doing work for them then lie that the thing is broken again because you did not do it well. My sister, people are very dishonest.
Anyway, Whistle told us that this particular job is the kind of job that will not bring trouble, that is why I joined them. Walahi, if I had known it would land me in police wahala, I would have run so far and fast that the back of my legs would be touching the back of my head but see me now in chains, me a welder, held bound in chains in a police cell.
I am in trouble and the main cause of the trouble has still not been found by the police…life is hard.
As I was saying, we went to rob an old couple. I swear, we didn’t mean to do them any harm. We knew that they have a son who was doing well and we had been told by Whistle that they had just been sent their monthly allowance by their son who lives in Lekki.
I don’t know how come Whistle found out that they had been sent money but he told us we would just go there and get the money from them. We were not to harm them, since they were an old couple. I mean what would they do to us? They won’t be able to fight us and once we showed them our gun, I was sure they would cooperate.
Myself and Hammer, who was the one who held the gun went into the house through the ceiling, Whistle was supposed to stay outside and watch if anyone or anything suspicious was going on.
The old man was very cooperative, he told us not to harm anybody in the house, it was just him, his wife who is also an old woman and one small girl that runs errands for them. The girl will be about 7 or 8 years old. And all of them were very cooperative.
So, we collected the money, we collected their phones, the DVD but we did not carry the TV, it was an old model. Then Hammer stared telling me that we should share the money equally that even though it was Whistle who brought the job, we can’t share equally with him…we did not know that Whistle was just standing by the window listening to what Hammer and I were saying. He was supposed to be outside the house, looking at the street maybe a neighbor had called the police.
That’s how the job became bad market that day. He started shouting from outside the window that he knows Hammer would try to cheat him, that Hammer is not a good person; that he knew we would want to take more than we had agreed…
That was how the woman looked at him and recognized him as one of her customers; that is the elderly woman we went to rob. She said, ‘Liasu, is that you?’
That’s how everything scattered o.
Immediately, Hammer started shouting, cursing Whistle, saying he has used his bad luck to infect all of us. Now that the woman knows him, then there was no way we could live them alive because they would go and report to the police and police will trace whistle to us.
Finish o, that was how we all just started arguing. Me I was against Hammer wasting them, these are already old people, how many years do they have left on this earth? Why waste them? But Hammer just stabbed them like goat. He said it was all Whistle’s fault.
We ran out of the house but we did not waste the small girl because she did not look like someone who knew anything. Only for me to be in my shop one day and police came to arrest me. They got Hammer too.
But Whistle nko, the bastard has disappeared.
(series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)
photo credit