ARMED robbers on Tuesday night reportedly robbed at gunpoint several travellers, including National Record’s Benue State correspondent, Amos Aar.
The attack was said to have occurred at about 9pm along Naka-Makurdi Road, few kilometres from Makurdi, the Benue State capital when the passengers who boarded vehicles from Otukpo to Makurdi ran into the robbery roadblock.
Narrating his ordeal, Mr Aar disclosed that the robbers, in addition to fleecing all passengers, also raped two female passengers in an operation which lasted for over an hour without any security intervention.
He said the robbers, numbering about ten, collected passengers’ phones and other valuables on them while threatening to kill those who do not have a handset or money on them.
According to him, the robbers maltreated some passengers who later begged for their sim cards.
“We took off from Otukpo at about 7:30pm because there were no passengers at the park because of the increment in transport fair as a result of the high cost of fuel. So, we were coming without any challenge until we saw a vehicle in front of us close to Adaka, a village few kilometres before Makurdi but we thought it was a security checkpoint until we instead met the robbers,” Mr Aar narrated.
He however thanked God for sparing their lives in the hands of the robbers and cautioned passengers plying the road to avoid night journeys even as he called on the security agencies to conduct more surveillance on the route to check the activities of the criminals.
It would be recalled that a former Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in Naka was ambushed and killed on the same road earlier this year and there have been series of armed robbery incidents and banditry along the Naka-Makurdi road in recent times.
At the time of this report, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO, Benue Command, was yet to react to enquiries on the robbery incident.
