Reports across country indicate rising incidents of armed robbery attacks on road travellers across country, especially on those who travel by night.
Despite the warnings by different agents of government on the high risks involved in travelling by night, many travellers have remained adamant for various reasons, chief among which is time gained by that.
By using night bus for instance, someone who has a wedding to attend in a town in the Southeast or Southsouth could leave Lagos for eample in the evening on Friday and arrive the in time on Saturday for the wedding.
Our correspondent reports that in the past few weeks there have been incidents of brutal attacks on night travellers.
A commuter travelling at night from Abuja to Enugu penultimate Friday said that they were lucky to escape such attack somewhere near Ejule in Kogi State. He said they were luck to get wind of a road stickup by a band of robbers along that road and were forced to make a detour and travel through Asaba to Onitsha and then Enugu instead of their intended route of hitting Obollo Afor then Enugu.
He said that though they were lucky to escape, they saw victims of an earlier attacks who were in buses ahead of them with broken lips, bloodied eyes and various tell-tale signs of vicious attacks.
According to him, they ended up getting to Enugu on Saturday around 10 pm.
In another incident, a Pastor who gave his name as Sunday left Sagamu Ogun State Wednesday night for a land liberation programme in Ohaozora area of Ebonyi State. He was commuting in a luxury bus.
He said he did not know how the thieves got into the bus, only he knew was that when they were not even half way through the journey the thieves emerged from within the bus to visit terror on the passengers.
They collected all the valuables on them, including telephone sets, ATM cards, money, laptops and goods.
Many of them were thoroughly beaten with iron rods and machetes and ended up in hospitals, with cases in various stages of seriousness.
The prayer programme was aborted as he was still in hospital on the date arranged for it.
A woman, who was travelling to Umuahia from Lagos, was luckier. According to her, the driver of the bus in which she was travelling was able to descry the robbers who were robbing a vehicle ahead of them and had to engage reverse gear.
she said it was only God that saved them from entering a ditch. she said that as it was not night she was not able to tell the eact location the incident took place.
A few weeks ago, robbers descended on a vehicle going to Abuja and shot the driver for trying to maneuver his way through the road barricade placed by the robbers. The passengers were robbed down to their pants, with many sustaining serious injuries.
A driver who plies Abuja to Lagos said he had been in the diring business for close to 20 years but that he was beginning to fear for the first in his life because of the unusual rise in armed robbery attacks on roads.
According to him, robbery attacks on passengers take place even in the day time but that he should advise any reasonable person to shun night trips at least for now.
The Rainbow
