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Abiodun 'Godogodo' Egunjobi – the one-eyed monstrous bandit



Abiodun Egunjobi, alias Godogodo, had only one eye however he used to be about the deadliest armed robber Nigeria ever had.

When Lawrence Anini, the Edo State born kingpin and arguably Nigeria’s most talked about bandit of the 80s, used to be at the peak of his reign, little did he understand that quite a few years later, a successor would take up the mantle and dwarf some thing he ever did.

Up came 36-years-old Abiodun Egunjobi, alias Godogodo, who rose from being a slum boy to the leader of a gang that defied all reasons, struck with precision, killed except mercy and terrorised Lagos and the south west with reckless abandon.

Before his arrest on August 1, 2013, Godogodo, additionally regarded as the one-eyed assassin, gave the Lagos State Police Command so a great deal headache for 14 years, so lots so that on the day he was once arrested, the command erupted in joy: at least its men would be secure from his guns.

Originally from Ogun State, Egunjobi was once on the desired list of the police for over 10 years and the way he managed to stay clear of the police is nevertheless legendary.

In fact, he used to be at a time, on the top of the Most Wanted listing of the Command with quite a few Police Commissioners assigning the hardest of police officers on his trail.

At that time, any theft in Lagos had the imprint of Godogodo, with him leading or one of his boys being responsible. He used to be famed for leading many robbery operations, in particular on banks, with the notorious reputation of killing over one hundred policemen in Lagos State.

Godogodo allegedly went for operations with a bag containing 10 fully loaded AK 47 rifles with 30 rounds of ammunition each and as such, he was absolutely organized in phrases of weapons on his back.

It used to be gathered that Godogodo used to inform his gang contributors that he would by no means be arrested alive and had vowed to go down with as many policemen as viable on the day he is unable to break out arrest.

This vow used to be later found to be real, as anti-robbery detectives recovered numerous loaded AK47s, each with 60 rounds of stay ammunition, from unique parts of his residence, inclusive of the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, sitting room on the day of his arrest.

He was once so precise at disguising his crook things to do that even his spouse and family participants never knew what he was into.

He had six houses in one of a kind areas consisting of Lagos, Ogun and Ondo States, and by no means stayed in a unique area for greater than a month.

He had over 52 fish ponds and handed for a successful businessman, revered by means of all. he by no means drank, smoked, womanised nor socialised, portraying himself as a very accountable household man, but deep down, he was as lethal as a mamba.

In the beginning

Godogodo started out his voyage into the lethal world of crime after spending seven years in prison for what he considered a minor offence.

As a scrap dealer in the slum of Gatankowa, Abule-Egba, he was concerned in a battle and the police arrested him.

With no one to bail him out, Godogodo used to be sent to reformatory and in his mind, he believed his going to jail was an injustice and blamed the police for it.

While in prison, he grew to be acquainted with extra lethal armed robbers and fashioned an alliance with them and took time to understudy them.

When he ultimately left prison, he determined that he was going to deal with the police for sending him to jail for seven years.

As a precursor to actualising his decision, he took some time to study the psyche of an average policeman and used the end result to build an fantastic strategy that helped him evade arrest for so long.

This also made it possible for him to preserve an air of invincibility amongst his gang members.

Many of them believed he had magical powers that enabled him disappear on every occasion he wanted.

During his interrogation, Godogodo told the police that he took only raw money all through his operations and would only assault a region he knew there would be ample cash to cart away.

He additionally said he doesn’t have any bank account as he invested all his money in property at once after each operation.

Reign of terror

Abbey Godogodo visited many Lagosians with sorrow, tears and blood.

Many would not forget Sunday, September 9, 2012, when he and his gang terrorised the country and left indelible marks in the minds of many families, after he led a coordinated assault in the town the place many harmless people which includes policemen misplaced their lives.

He published how he coordinated the bloody operation and gave chilling small print of how he led participants of his gang to cart away hundreds of thousands of greenbacks from bureau de alternate operators in Agege and Gbagada areas of Lagos.

According to Godogodo:

“On that fateful day, I referred to as one of my boys, Sayeed Omolopa, to meet me at Alfa Beach in Ajah, and some different boys led via Kasali and Ejike.

They have been about seven and my boys were five. Yemi Boss, who got here with Ejike, stated we go to Agege and rob some bureau de exchange operators.

The agreement was that anybody will get what he lays his arms on.

We used two vehicles and over nine AK-47 rifles.

When we got to Agege, some bureau de change operators that saw us ran to us thinking we desired to change cash and we opened furnace on them and ran into their stores to pack all the money we found.

In fact, we robbed from save to store and we additionally shot sporadically to scare people. We shot at human beings who tried to block the street and prevent us from moving.

I can’t be counted the quantity of people killed in that operation.

Wherever human beings tried to block the road, we opened hearth on them.

The boys that went with me for that job had been notorious, they have been tough to manipulate however they all feared me.

We made a lot of money from the operation.

While we have been making an attempt to escape, we met a group of policemen attached to the Rapid Response Squad, RRS, and we thinking they were after us.

On coming near them, we opened furnace on the van and killed all the police in it and accumulated their rifles and escaped thru Lagos-Abekuta road.

Money was once not shared after the operation due to the fact all people took some thing he was in a position to grab.

When I acquired home I realised that I made over N500,000, however some days later, I was once knowledgeable that one of my boys, Tosin, made over N6 million from the operation.

Everybody made a lot of money from the operation.

I didn’t border to read the newspapers the subsequent day to be aware of the extent of damage however I knew many people lost their lives in that operation.

You know, as robbers, we do now not go for operations to kill however we kill when we don’t have option.

On our way, we noticed some policemen at Oko-Oba police station, they didn’t know that we were robbers.

We killed them earlier than gathering their rifles.

Some few months later, we snatched a white Range Rover Sport in Ikeja and two of the occupants escaped with their phones.

We suspected that they had been going to call the police.

On arriving Agidingbi Road, we noticed two RRS guys on a motorcycle and we thinking they were coming after us.

We slowed down, with the aid of the time they acquired very shut to us, I opened the window and fired rapid shots at them, they fell into the gutter with their motorbike and I despatched my boys to get their rifles earlier than we drove off.

When we got to Coca-Cola junction, there used to be serious visitors and we determined to make a turn.

When we bought to the spot the place the policemen fell, we noticed some human beings who had been trying to help them and my boys opened fire on them again.

We managed to make our way to Medical Road, close to Computer Village, however via then, the policemen there had acquired message of our operations and the moment they sighted us, they opened furnace and broken our tyres.

We managed the tyres up to Capitol Road.

There was site visitors and I got here out of my automobile to clear the site visitors and there was once this Toyota Camry following us.

I didn’t be aware of that there was an armed cell policeman in it. When I lower back I found that Kasali used to be struggling with the cell policeman who used to be carrying a rifle.

I fired some photographs at the policeman.

He attempted to run away, I chased him and killed him on the spot before selecting his rifle. We snatched some other automobile and deserted the Range Rover Sport earlier than we escaped.”

Such used to be his his ferocious reign of terror.

His arrest
The Lagos State Police Command led by means of the then Commissioner, Umar Manko, mandated the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), led with the aid of Superintendent of Police, Abba Kyari, to carry an end to the reign of Abbey Godogodo and that commenced intensive investigations which led to the capitulation of his empire.

Manko used to be given direct orders by way of the then Inspector General of Police to make sure the Godogodo phenomenon was once quashed at all all cost.

After the gang attacked the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, where two police inspectors and extra than 5 people had been killed and over N100 million stolen, the police determined to focal point on profiling the suspect, because, up to that point, no one knew whatever about him or what he looked like.

The police additionally started looking at the opportunity of preempting his subsequent operations.

The detectives got a lucky damage when a robbery, which equipped into the hooked up modus operandi of Godogodo’s gang, used to be mentioned at a branch of First Bank in Ilorin, Kwara State and on acquiring the shut circuit television recording of the operation, his photograph was then known.

Also, most of his gang contributors arrested were proven the video and they all agreed that the man in it used to be certainly the One-Eyed bandit and that brought the police a few steps nearer to their target.

The investigation led the police to Dubai the place he went regularly to buy goods for his boutique, all in a bid to get their man.

The CP spoke of their spoil through:

“After we placed his house in Ibadan, we established surveillance around the house for 14 days, earlier than we ultimately struck and got him.

Most of his colleagues that we had arrested would tell us that the man had the powers to disappear.

He additionally used to inform them that whenever it grew to be clear that he used to be going to be arrested, it was once his lifeless physique that the police would pick.

And earlier than he was once killed, he would kill as many policemen as he could. So, we have been very mindful of that warning.

The operation took us about seven months before we sooner or later got him that early morning. Even, on that day, after we had recognized the house, policemen waited there for more than 11 hours.

We didn’t go in and no person came out of the place.

But we remained affected person and persisted to reflect onconsideration on our picks cautiously until he in the end got here out.

And to prove the factor of what he used to inform his colleagues, we recovered six AK47 rifles in his kitchen, his bedroom, and toilets, everywhere.

And each rifle had double magazines connected to it; which ability that in each rifle, he had about 60 rounds of live ammunition.”

credit: Crime Fighters


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