I embraced robbery after losing bank job -Suspect

A robbery suspect, now in the custody of the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS), Ikeja, Lagos State, said he took to robbery after he lost his job.
The suspect, Mr Joseph Sunday, said he had no means of taking care of himself and his dependents after he was laid off by First Bank of Nigeria. Sunday, who was apprehended by SARS in March, this was second time he was arrested for robbery.
The suspect also disclosed that he had gone to prisons twice because of one robbery operation.
He said: “This is the second time I would be arrested for robbery. Prison inmates who saw me twice in prison didn’t know what happened
. What happened was that I was given bail after my sister spent a whooping sum of money and then I was granted bail. But my bail was later cut short (vacated) and I was taken back to Kirikiri prison.
“I later got to understand that my bail was vacated because the judge in charge of my case was transferred and a new one took over. “My sister spent almost N200,000 to get my bail.
I had to raise money for another bail. The money for that was N250,000. When it seemed the second bail was not going to work, I raised money for the third bail.
“If I go to prison now, it would be the third time. But if I’m allowed to go by the police, this would be goodbye to robbery.”
Sunday said that he was a driver with a branch of the bank at Elephant House, Marina in 2010 before he took to crime. “It was because I lost my job that I took to crime. In fact, it was friends that pushed me into robbery,” he added.
The suspect said that after he lost his job, he went to meet some of his friends at Onipanu, who were also drivers. According to him, most of them were his childhood friends.
Sunday said he told them that he had lost his job and needed a job to survive. It was at Onipanu that he met Isiaka and his life a turn for the underworld.
“I became friends with Isiaka. But it is almost four years now that I saw Isiaka last. It was Isiaka that initiated me into robbery.
“I complained to him that I didn’t have a job anymore. He took robbery as a business. He took me to Maryland under the bridge to introduce me to his friends and gang.
He told the gang that I was a driver and that I would be driving them whenever there was an operation.
“The first robbery I went with the gang was at Ogudu Road, Ojota. We snatched a vehicle there.
It was a Toyota Camry car. We were four that went for that operation and we had two guns with us. We had never killed in that gang. In fact, I had never killed in my life.”
“My mother used to warn me but I wouldn’t listen, but now I’m ready to listen. I wish to have an opportunity to call my mother and tell her that I’m sorry for not heeding her warnings.”