Twenty-four-year-old Sherifat Bakare and four other members of her gang,
were apprehended on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 by the men of Ogun State
SARS, who had been on their trail after receiving a tip-off about the
gang’s plan.She told Punch, It
all began a few weeks ago when another member of the gang, Bola
Onasile, (also in SARS custody) had approached her boyfriend about the
availability of N70m in a wealthy man’s house in Joju area of Sango,
Ogun State.
I am from Idofian in Kwara State. My father is late but my mother lives in Ibadan. She has no idea I do this kind of job and she does not even know I am in police custody.I was living with a security guard in a house at Osborne in Ikoyi. The landlord of the house was out of the country. I was going from there to ‘hustle’ in Lekki every night.Raji was a good helper to me. That was why I decided to leave prostitution when he begged me. When he introduced me to armed robbery, I asked him if there would be no problem and he assured me that there would be none. When we started dating, I did not know he was an armed robber though.”I was hustling before Raji, my boyfriend, told me to join his gang........
I have only gone on two operations with them. I don’t know him (Onasile) well. I only know that he was the one who brought the job.Raji gathered other members and they snatched a vehicle (a Nissan Quest) around Iwo Road, Ibadan. We decided that the vehicle would be used for the operation.The gang asked me to sit in the front of the vehicle so that when we were stopped by policemen on the way, being a woman in the front seat would make them unsuspicious. But during the operation, the police cornered us and Raji was shot dead."36-year-old Onasile, who brought the N70m job, was evasive when our correspondent asked him how he knew about the money.He later said that an acquaintance of his, a man named Tunde, informed him about the money.
“Tunde is like a brother to me. He told me the man we were going to rob was his relation. He said the man had N70m at home. I told him I had no boys who could do the job. But he was always disturbing me about getting a gang together to do the operation.
“Few days later, I informed Raji about the operation and he told me he could get boys for the job. We planned to sell the vehicle we snatched after the operation but we did not know how police got to know about the operation. Tunde ran away when the police were after us.”
