“On 10th January 2024, I and 3 of my course mates were supposed to go to Onitsha to buy gifts for our lecturers.  We’ve written our final exams and our induction is coming up soon, the whole class contributed money to gift our lecturers for their efforts throughout our study years.

That morning, I woke up feeling unusual and I called one of my course mates that is supposed to go with us and told her that I wasn’t sure I could go again because I wasn’t feeling alright.

She somehow convinced me again and as I was dressing up, I remembered the popular stories of how people loose their phones and valuable items at Onitsha so I dropped my iPhone at home and left.

We boarded a bus and the bus was fully loaded with bags of people returning from the village. A particular bag that was tied on top of the bus kept falling and the driver kept stopping to tie it back.

It was becoming very annoying as the bag fell the seventh time, someone volunteered to carry the bag inside the car and it solved the problem.

We finally arrived to where we would alight and board a Keke to the market. We entered Keke and just three poles away from where we boarded, an incoming vehicle collided into our Keke and our Keke summersaulted.

Thankfully, we didn’t have much bruises though I hit my chest on the Keke and it still hurts. The only person that obtained serious bruises was a pregnant woman that was standing by the road.

We came down and after little back and forth, we continued our movement and we got to the market. We bought all the electronic gadgets, wrapper etc that we budgeted to buy and loaded them in the bus we chartered there.

The 18-seater bus was filled with the things we bought, we had to tie some of them at the top of the car so we can have space to sit down.

Our movement was very swift until we got to a checkpoint somewhere in Orsu. We passed that checkpoint while we were going so we didn’t sense any trouble.

It was about 7:40pm, two men flashed their touch at us and asked out driver to clear and park. They were wearing a black polo and trouser with a black headtie.

As our driver parked, they asked us to come down and we did. They searched us and took all the money we had, our phones, the whole money the driver had on him and his phone too. Other cars were passing there and nobody cared to interfere.

They asked me why I had just a Nokia torch phone and I told them that it’s what I use, they searched my bag and saw sanitary pad and didn’t bother to search further because if they did, they would have seen my money that I wrapped in a tissue inside my bag.

They asked us to shift down towards the bush with them and we did. While we were moving down, they called another man who is their supposed leader and the man came with a ladies bike on same attire.

He asked the driver to go and move the car and he started walking to the bus, the man corked his gun and said “Unah still dey here?, run!”.

We started running and he released a gunshot though not in our direction. We ran into the bus and our driver moved.

We all broke down in tears including the old man(driver). They made away with all our money and phones.

We got to our school and borrowed money from some students on ground and paid the driver. That night I couldn’t sleep, whenever I close my eyes I keep hearing the sound of corking a gun and then “unah still dey here?, run”.

We narrated what happened to people and they all said that it’s a normal thing for those security men at that spot. They are officers in the daytime and robbers at night. People that are meant to protect us!

Perhaps if I had listened to my instincts, I wouldn’t have gone with them. I’m grateful no life was lost both in the accident and the robbery. People need to be more careful and possibly avoid that Orsu road once it’s 6pm.”