Copies of the letter, according to Saturday Sun, were conspicuously pasted on the wall of some of the buildings. In the letter, the robbers said: “We will pay you people a visit soon. Be prepared for us.” Following the development, residents of the area have made arrangements to secure their houses.
While they have collectively engaged the services of vigilance groups, most of them have erected iron doors in their rooms. Some, however, have fled their homes. A resident, who spoke with Saturday Sun, said they woke up recently to discover the letter pasted on their gates and walls. “Initially, we thought the letter was from either PHCN or one of those bills from local government. We got the shock of our lives when we read and it was from robbers who said they would visit us any moment.
As you can observe, everyone is panicky. I have hired the services of a welder to fortify my door,” he stated. Another resident begged the police to come to their rescue, as the vigilance group they contracted seems not to be up to the task on hand. “It is not a joke, because like the letters said, they will surely come. We have vigilantes and we are made to pay N100 per month for security. The only way out is for the police to secure us. If they don’t, we will just keep money at home because I know that they will surely come,” he said. Another resident said she was yet to recover from the shock of a previous experience, revealing: “Late last year, they visited my house heavily-armed.
They took every valuable thing in the house and left. They were about eight of them. The next day, the same group of people came to the next compound and robbed the residents. When we called the police, all they did was to arrest the ladder the robbers used to climb and promised to investigate the matter. Till date, nothing has happened.” On why they are yet to draw the attention of the police to the purported letter, one of the the residents said: “Nobody knows if they have informants within the police.
If you report to the police and those bad boys get to know, you can imagine what our fate would be when they finally come. And besides, those robbers would wait for the police to get tired of patrolling the area and then strike. It is rather unfortunate.” When contacted on phone, Lagos State police spokesperson, DSP Ngozi Braide, called on the residents not to panic, as the police would ensure that the bad boys were flushed out from Ijeshatedo and its environs. She advised residents to make use of the police hotlines, which are written conspicuously in every police station and public places.
