I had always listened to stories of robbery with complete detachment, not quite believing that it would happen to me, although at the back of my mind, I knew it could.
The story I am about to tell you happened in April 2011, actually, less than a month before my father died.
I was then working in Kaduna and as I was wont to do, I had travelled to Katsina on weekend on a Friday. Early in the morning on Saturday, I had returned from mosque where I offered the early morning prayer and was getting ready to take my daughter, Mauludatu Ahmad, to seat for JAMB, when I got a call from my neighbor in Kaduna, M. Alhassan Jibrin. The moment I got that call, I had a premonition of danger. I instinctively knew that I was about to hear something bad, so my heart skipped a bit and began to race. I listened to him patiently as he narrated how they woke up and saw signs that my kitchen window had been tampered with. The burglar proof was forcefully bent. But they couldn't see very well what was amiss, even though they could see that my home theater system was missing. I thanked him and continued to immediately get ready to go back to Kaduna that day. However, I dropped Mauludatu at the venue of the exam before proceeding.
I returned to Kaduna a few hours later and discovered that some of my electronic gadgets had been carted away by burglars. A quick check revealed that a number of other items too, such as a couple of suits had also been taken away.
I went and reported to the police station, returned and got a welder to repair the damaged burglar proof. I resigned myself and began to think regretfully how my weekend had been spoiled when my brother, Shuaibu Abdulkadir, called to commiserate with me over what I had gone through. He said he would stopover in my place on his way from Abuja. When he came, he said he was on his way home to Bakori. I decided to make the most of what was left of the weekend, so I said I would follow him to Bakori. As he had a couple of things to do in Kaduna, I decided to wait for him in my office where I was going to park my car.
He came a few minutes after 8:00pm, and we set out for home. We took the Danja route after Zaria, through Basawa and Hunkuyi. It was just about a kilometer to Hunkuyi Police Station that we saw them. I was bent on my phone, going through Facebook when, Shuaibu, who was driving, suddenly shouted in an agitated voice, "Robbers! They're robbing people"! I jerked my head up and took in the scene at a glance. I saw three people wearing camouflage Army uniform and all of them were holding riffles. Spread out by the roadside were several people lying flat on the ground. My heart did a somersault and began to race. I saw myself jump out of my skin and for a split second I was paralyzed with fear. I didn't know what to do. Then the spell broke. I was holding my phone with one hand and its cover with the other hand while my second phone was charging on the car charger. I immediately shoved one of the phones under my seat, as the car came to a halt in front of the robbers.
One of them pulled my door open and shouted, "Oya, kudi! kudi! money"! My brother's phone suddenly began to ring at that critical moment...my assailant immediately seized the phone I was holding on one hand and the phone cover on the other hand. I made to bring out the money from my trousers' pocket, but he pushed my hand away, thrust his hand in the pocket and pulled out all the money (₦28,000.00). My brother, who was holding his ringing phone with one hand, reached out and opened the glove compartment and brought out his money (₦30,000.00), which was in an envelope and handed it over to the robber. The robber then pulled back, cocked his gun and pointed it at the back seat and shouted, "Who's in there?", at the same time pulling the back door open. All this while, the other two robbers were standing in front of the car with their guns pointed at us.
Then a big lorry drove behind us and they told us to leave immediately while they approached it. It was then my brother realized that he had misplaced the car key in the frenzy! They shouted at us to leave but there was no key...My brother was so worked up and confused, he didn't know what to do. Out of fear, he came out and tried to push the car out of the way. Of course, he couldn't! It was when he got out that I saw the key on his seat and I called him back.
Somehow, that was how we managed to leave the scene. We drove into Hunkuyi, passing the useless police station, which could be seen from the robbery scene. We didn't even bother to report. We stopped in the village and took stock of our losses. It was then we realized that the robbers had forgotten to take my brother's phone, which was actually ringing at the time of the robbery!
I brought out my second phone from under my seat and called my father and told him what happened.