Kanyi Okeke
Emotion ran high yesterday at the Ajao Estate Lagos, abode of one of the female victims of last Saturday’s robbery attack on a Luxury bus belonging to Ekene Dilli Chukwu Nigeria Limited and reported rape, along Ijebu/Ode/Ore expressway, Ogun state, following the 16-year-old’s account of how she escaped from being gang- raped.
The gunmen according to her, carried out the reported rape out of frustration, when they discovered that their victims were students and not businesswomen who were possibly traveling to purchase goods in Lagos….
This is just as vanguard gathered that some of the girls who were rushed to the hospital on arrival Sunday, had been discharged , as none of them sustained major injury.
However, the Ogun State Police Command has said that it had no report of rape in the statement made by driver of the attacked luxury bus, even as it disclosed that adequate patrol along the expressway had been intensified.
The Junior Secondary School girl (names withheld) who still showed signs of shock attributed her escape from possible rape to sheer providence through her unexpected menstrual flow.
According to her, “ I was sleeping and did not know how the bus was intercepted. But what woke me up was a bark and the next thing I noticed was that we were inside the forest.
At that point, I started reciting my rosary on protection. Our phones were first collected and then cash. I was just with N1200, out of which I was to buy recharge card to contact my parents on approaching Lagos. That, they collected.
“We were thereafter asked to lie down. It was at that point that they discovered we were students and one of them shouted in pidgin English “so na because of these small children we dey do all this wahala?
Then, they started approaching us saying we should pull off our clothes. But one of them challenged the person that said so, asking if he did not realise we were children and it resulted in a shouting match between them.
As the quarrel was on, another member of the gang came to me and said I should strip naked, pointing his long gun at me. I cried and begged him to have mercy on me but he didn’t listen . Out of fear of being shot, I pulled my underwear, only to discover I was already soaked in blood. I did not know what got into me then. But the next statement that came out from me was that one of them had already done it and I started crying. He pointed his touch light and said ‘ you want talk say you never do am before?’ and he went away. I do not know what would have happened to me had my menstrual flow not occurred”, she said, shivering from the thought of the unexpected.
Asked if they had their ways with her colleagues, she replied, “ I did not see anything because we were all scattered and the whole place was dark., so you would not see or know what was being done to the other person except yourself. What they did was to point their touch light on whoever they wanted to talk to and then almost immediately, switch it off. The only thing I heard was screams and silent prayers. I can not tell how long we stayed in the bush because I was not with a wristwatch” she said.
According to a victim who spoke on condition of anonymity, “I was coming from Ijebu-Ode that Saturday, heading for Lagos, when all of a sudden I noticed that vehicles in front had slowed down. It was about 8.15 pm. Then, I sighted some young men armed running and hitting vehicle windscreens. This was followed by gun shots. It was at that point that I realized they were robbers and I abandoned my vehicle and dashed into a near-by bush where I stayed for two hours. When I came out of the bush, including others who did same thing, we discovered that about five vehicles were driven away by the robbers.
The robbers were only putting on trousers without shirts and they numbered over thirty and were armed with AK 47 riffles. They made away with valuables inside the cars that were not snatched, including my phones. When I dialed my numbers, the person that replied spoke in Yoruba dialect”,
The POLICE have intensified adequate patrol along the expressway by dividing the expressway to smaller beats for adequate patrol by Police teams commanded by Superior Police Officers”.
In case of distress, Adejobi said the command could be reached on these numbers:
08037168147, 080321136765, 08081771717, 08081770416, 08123822910.
