For some people, N24,000 is chicken change.
It is what many people spend at a sitting. For me, that kind of money is big money and it is something I can never make in a day.
I am a barber at Alagbado, I have a barbing salon and I will not even say I am not making money, like that. I make small, small money.
The kind of money I make helps me to survive, you know; manage to keep the business going with the small I better pass my neighbour generator, recharge my phone and call my girlfriend or buy her credit and small, small things.
Me, I am not yet married. I am only 26years old. I too young to marry and even sef, there is no money to marry woman. Women don’t like suffering so how will I maintain woman in the house if I cannot get N24,ooo shop rent money?
That is why I am in police cell today.
My landlord has been giving me wahala with the rent. Even though I have to buy at least N1,000 petrol in the generator every day because there’s no NEPA and customers will not come to your shop when they know you have no gen and then after you buy fuel customer will not even agree to pay for using gen, many times they will argue with you and complain. Ah, some customer na we re o! So I cannot see the money for the shop rent. By that time, I was owing the landlord for more than six months and even though I always tell him Baba, I will pay, it was not easy to save the money.
So one day, Elede come to my shop and tell me that e get one deal for me. Elede is not the name papa and mama give am. We just dey call him that name because tay tay for school, once he sleep, he will be snoring like Pig.
Me I say I will agree to the deal because I need money badly and what is the deal”? He said we should rob a few houses along Owonikoko area. I said, “Good, shebi we will not kill anybody sha?”
He said, “Oti, o. We will just shakara dem with our guns and they will co-operate.”
So, we gather three more boys from the area. One is a welder, his name is Shafiu, one is a mechanic, we call him “performer” the last one is Sule, we call him “Absorber”.
Sule is even the leader because he has more experience than all of us. He has been in this business for years and we are just starting. He was the one who brought the two guns and the spanners and burglary proof cutter and one bullet that we used that day.
That day, around 2 in the mid night, we go and do the job. We obtain about 16 handsets, one dvd, one laptop and some money, I don’t know the correct amount because we get them from different people and we did not kill anybody, we just put fear in them for them to co-operate and we left. There was no police, no nothing.
I was happy that at last, I can be able to pay my shop rent.
We now said oya make we share the things we steal after three days because, Absorber said, we should watch out first for police. So for the first two days, we went to the area to survey, to know whether police was investigating but when nothing happened, we decided to share the things at one uncompleted building.
Absorber, as per the one who bring the gun and all the equipment we use for the job said he must take N56,000 cash and 10 handsets. He give me two phones and N500 as my share. The thing annoy me, ehn but because I no want wahala I just tell myself, shebi another time will come and I will make sure I don’t show the others what I steal from the people we go to rob.
But Performer and Elede are very angry and they started arguing and shouting with Absorber and telling him that he is too greedy. They started to argue very very loud and small thing remain, dem for fight. How, I wish I for just comot and leave them there and go to my shop but I was praying Absorber will give me extra money or extra handsets because two handset can not fit to bring enough money for the rent I need to pay.
Anyway, I was still there, trying to settle the quarrel when police just enter with gun. Maybe somebody hear the quarrel and argument and everything they are saying and call police.
That is how they carried all of us to the station.
