FOUR suspected armed robbers, led by a self-acclaimed medical doctor, have been arrested by operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Lagos State Police Command. They were said to have terrorised the residents of Lagos and other South West cities before they were arrested by the law enforcement agents.
The suspects include a self-acclaimed medical doctor, Bayo Fisayo Dosumu (62); Isaiah Willy (41), who claimed to be a commercial driver; a self-styled gospel musician, Jonathan Nsirim (36) and Tairu Kareem (44), who claimed to be a panel beater.
According to the police, the self-acclaimed professionals and artisans were tracked down at different locations after they were declared wanted for some deadly robbery operations, including bank and highway robberies as well as ritual killings.
Narrating his role in the gang, Dosunmu, the suspected leader of the gang, said: “It was drug consumption that made me to come in contact with criminally-minded people who lured me into their gang. We also smoked and drank alcohol whenever we came together to relax in the house of one of us or hotel bars and restaurants in Lagos, including places where big men go to take hard drugs.
He claimed: “I am a medical doctor. I graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife in 1980 and did my housemanship with Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. I started working at a General Hospital in 1995 and worked there till 2003 as a medical doctor. I worked in the casualty section.
“I was not the one who fired and killed the policemen and officers shot dead by our gang in different operations. It was our chairman called Fine Money who killed or shot policemen. He killed about two policemen.
“He told us that the reason why he killed any policeman he met in an operation is to instill fear in the policemen so that they would not fight the gang or recognise its members later, but most importantly to collect policemen’s superior weapons in order to strengthen our gang.
“He said that robbery was like going to the war front and to win, one must try to capture or kill his enemies. He added that in Nigeria and other developing countries, policemen shoot to kill when they confront armed robbers, unlike in the developed countries where they try to capture the robbers alive. He said he would only stop killing policemen the day they stop killing robbers.
“I also participated in the robbery of a branch of a commercial bank, some filling stations, supermarkets and pharmaceutical shops. But please, believe me when I say that in the robbery at Ayobo on November 16/17, 2013 where the gang killed two policemen, I did not fire a single shot. I was not even armed.
“On that day, they came to my house at No. 32 Rasheed Ikotun Street at about 7 pm and we smoked and drank together. They begged me to assist them with my vehicle to carry their cylinder and other welding tools to a bush. When the cylinder and other welding tools were loaded into my car boot, I personally drove the car to the bush where they offloaded them.
“They told me that they wanted to use it to go and rob one of the new generation banks and I told them the only role I could play. I told them I would not have the courage to follow them into the bank. So, they paid me N10,000 for carrying the cylinder to where they told me to drop it and the tools inside a bush. Then I left.
“The operations at filling stations were better. What I hated was the way our chairman, Fine Money, and Ayo Bassey used to kill people anyhow.
“From one of the filling station operations, I got only N5,000. In street operations where we attacked residents, supermarkets and medicine stores, I used to go home with between N10,000 and N20,000, depending on how much cash we got.
“At times, we might not get a kobo from some shops. It was either they had not made any sale or they had removed the money to their houses or banks.
“Even in our street-to-street operations, there was a house we entered, thinking that we would get reasonable money but we could not get up to N5,000 from the assumed big man. We gave him the beating of his life. We wanted to even take him away and use him for rituals but time was not on our side because it was a 10-minute operation.
“It was my brother, Tossy, who introduced me to the gang’s chairman. Initially, I used to call him Fine Man, but I was later corrected that his name is Fine Money. We were joking one day when I called him Fine Man and he got angry and asked me whether I was not wishing him well in life. He asked me what value a fine man has without money. He said that was why he changed his name to Fine Money.”
Confessing some of the atrocities he committed as a medical doctor, he said: “I used to diagnose babies wrongly to be able to extort money from their parents. If it was fever, I would say it was diarrhoea or typhoid. But I have never been involved in selling new born babies to rich women who are desperate to have children.
“What I usually do is that if a rich man invites me to his house to treat his or her child, I would use the opportunity to organise my gang to rob him a few days after.”
On how he was arrested, he said: “I did not know that my gang members robbed that day. Though anytime any of them had a problem with the police, I was the one that usually bailed them, if it was not a bad case.
“So, that day, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Isheri Police Station called me on the phone. I had been a friend to every policeman, so I did not suspect that something was wrong. I answered his call only to be handed over to operatives of SARS who rushed towards me the moment they saw me. They handcuffed me and took me to their headquarters at GRA, Ikeja, Lagos.
“If I regain my freedom, I will never join or support any armed robbery gang. I have learnt my lessons. It was the devil that caused it.”
The second suspect, Isaah Willy, a native of Etinam in Awka Ibom State, who claimed to be a professional driver, said: “My own role was to carry iron cutter from the place they kept it to a filling station along Igando Road. They have not even given me my share up till today. They are supposed to give me N25,000, but they have not given me a dime till date.
“Even the robbery at the commercial bank, Confidence called me to carry a generator to the bank but the Mazda 626 I should have used was not working. They gave me N10,000 to look for the car that would carry the generator but I used my own car to drop the generator, which they said would supply light for the operation. I did not stay after dropping the generator at the bank.
“I only heard later that they killed three policemen. I felt bad when I heard it; even the N10,000 they paid me for dropping the generator for them, I would have returned it to them because I don’t like people killing policemen. I was very discouraged with that killing.
“It was one of my gang members called Kofi who brought a national newspaper which reported the brutal killing of the police officers. After reading it, I got annoyed.
“Another operation I participated in was the one of the popular churches in June 2012. We were four in number. This was how it happened: one dismissed mobile police officer knew one girl who was repatriated from London due to her criminal activities and prostitution. They later met one Richard.
“They were told that one woman used to go to the Central Bank to collect money (dollars) which she would take to a church, and, that they should go and attack her and collect the money. We discussed the matter deeply before we proceeded to carry out the operation.
“Some of us preferred attacking the woman the moment she came out from Central Bank and moved a reasonable distance away from the bank, while others said it would be better to attack her in the church or near the church to avoid fatal attacks from operatives of SARS.
“Kofi said the important thing was to attack her and collect the money; that he needed money badly whichever way it was collected.
“Kofi, Goddey, Hassan and I all followed the woman from Central Bank and collected the money. I was later given N400, 000. I did not know the total amount they collected from the woman, but it must be in millions.”
On why he was not so much interested in his job as a driver, he said there were many kabukabu drivers in Lagos and that they were no longer making much money. He said the only attempt he made to rob a rich woman who paid her N5,000 for a journey she used to collect only N2,000 nearly cost him his life, because a mob nearly lynched him but he managed to escape.
He said: “Any time I carried a person for ‘drop’ and found that he or she carried a lot of cash, it used to make me mad and I would start thinking about how to rob the person.
“It was greed that made me to allow my members to lure me into armed robbery. I used to be contended with the little I had. But when I started getting money, my responsibilities increased and, in an attempt to meet up or solve the problem, I joined a bad company.”
The third suspect, Jonathan Nsirim who hails from Imo State and claims to be a musician, said: “Initially, I did not know that they were armed robbers. I would not blame myself so much because I had financial problem also. To worsen my plight, big men no longer sprayed money on me when I sang their choice songs, and that contributed to my not finding out that they were bad boys on time.”
On his involvement with the gang, he said: “I only helped them to carry a cylinder and the rack in and out of a commercial bank at Malu Road, Ajegunle, a suburb of Lagos, and they gave me only N250,000 as my share.
“The second operation was at another commercial bank at Idimu where I got N350,000 at the end of everything. The third operation was at yet another commercial bank.”
On why they killed policemen, he said: “It was the chairman aka Fine Money that did it. I don’t know how many people he killed. His deputy, Eyo Bassey, also fired. He was a dismissed soldier. There was another dismissed soldier who was our member. He also carried gun and fired.”
The fourth suspect, Tairu Kareem, who claimed to be a panel beater from Okeho village, Oyo State, said he participated only in three robbery operations. In the bank operation at Idimu in 2013, he said, he was given N300,000, while that of another bank was not successful and he did not get a dime.”
On how they operated at one of the banks, he said Fine Money and the soldier first went in to collect money from the ATM. In the process, they surrounded the security men before they called us to come in. When we entered, we started working.”
Asked why they had to kill policemen, he said that he was surprised about it himself.
He said: “We first heard gunshots and when we called, they said there was no problem. Again, within five minutes, we heard rapid gunshots. We left. But after six days, we started hearing that three policemen were shot dead. We went into hiding because we knew that the police would be worried when their men or any of their men is shot dead by robbers”.
