When Lawrence Anini, the Edo State born kingpin and
arguably Nigeria’s most talked about bandit of the 80s,
was at the peak of his reign, little did he know that several
years later, a successor would take up the mantle and
dwarf anything 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
without mercy and terrorised Lagos and the south west
with reckless abandon.
Before his arrest on August 1, 2013, Godogodo, also known
as the one-eyed assassin, gave the Lagos State Police
Command so much headache for 14 years, so much so that
on the day he was arrested, the command erupted in joy:
at least its men would be safe from his guns.
Originally from Ogun State, Egunjobi was on the wanted
list of the police for over 10 years and the way he managed
to evade the police is still legendary.
In fact, he was at a time, on the top of the Most Wanted
list of the Command with several Police Commissioners
assigning the toughest of cops on his trail.
At that time, any robbery in Lagos had the imprint of
Godogodo, with him leading or one of his boys being
responsible.
He was famed for leading many robbery operations,
especially on banks, with the infamous reputation of killing
over 100 policemen in Lagos State.
See how police officers jubilated Godogodo’s capture.
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 fully prepared in
terms of weapons on his back.
It was gathered that Godogodo used to tell his gang
members that he would never be arrested alive and had
vowed to go down with as many policemen as possible on
the day he is unable to escape arrest.
This vow was later found to be real, as anti-robbery
detectives recovered several loaded AK47s, each with 60
rounds of live ammunition, from different parts of his
residence, including the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom,
sitting room on the day of his arrest.
He was so good at disguising his criminal activities that
even his wife and family members never knew what he
was into. He had six houses in different locations including
Lagos, Ogun and Ondo States, and never stayed in a
particular location for more than a month.
He had over 52 fish ponds and passed for a successful
businessman, respected by all. he never drank, smoked,
womanised nor socialised, portraying himself as a very
responsible family man, but deep down, he was as deadly
as a mamba.
In the beginning
Godogodo began his voyage into the deadly 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 involved in a fight and
the police arrested him. With no one to bail him out,
Godogodo was sent to jail and in his mind, he believed his
going to prison was an injustice and blamed the police for
it.
While in prison, he became acquainted with more deadly
armed robbers and formed an alliance with them and took
time to understudy them.
When he finally left prison, he decided that he was going
to deal with the police for sending him to prison 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 result to build an effective strategy that helped
him evade arrest for so long.
This also made it possible for him to maintain an air of
invincibility among his gang members.
Many of them believed he had magical powers that
enabled him disappear whenever he wanted.
During his interrogation, Godogodo told the police that he
took only raw cash during his operations and would only
attack a place he knew there would be enough cash to cart
away.
He also said he doesn’t have any bank account as he
invested all his money in property immediately 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
state and left indelible marks in the minds of many
families, after he led a coordinated attack in the city where
many innocent people including policemen lost their lives.
He revealed how he coordinated the bloody operation and
gave chilling details of how he led members of his gang to
cart away millions of dollars from bureau de change
operators in Agege and Gbagada areas of Lagos.
According to Godogodo:
“On that fateful day, I called one of my boys, Sayeed
Omolopa, to meet me at Alfa Beach in Ajah, and some
other boys led by Kasali and Ejike.
They were about seven and my boys were five. Yemi Boss,
who came with Ejike, said we should go to Agege and rob
some bureau de change operators.
The agreement was that everyone will get what he lays his
hands 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 wanted to change money
and we opened fire on them and ran into their shops to
pack all the money we found.
In fact, we robbed from shop to shop and we also shot
sporadically to scare people. We shot at people who tried
to block the road and prevent us from moving.
I can’t count the number of people killed in that
operation. Wherever people tried to block the road, we
opened fire on them. The boys that went with me for that
job were notorious, they were difficult to control but they
all feared me.
We made a lot of money from the operation. While we
were trying to escape, we met a team of policemen
attached to the Rapid Response Squad, RRS, and we
thought they were after us.
On approaching them, we opened fire on the van and
killed all the police in it and collected their rifles and
escaped through Lagos-Abekuta road. Money was not
shared after the operation because everyone took
whatever he was able to grab.
When I got home I realised that I made over N500,000, but
some days later, I was informed 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 next day to
know the extent of damage but I knew many people lost
their lives in that operation.
You know, as robbers, we do not go for operations to kill
but we kill when we don’t have option.
On our way, we spotted some policemen at Oko-Oba police
station, they didn’t know that we were robbers. We killed
them before collecting 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 were going to call the police. On
arriving Agidingbi Road, we spotted two RRS men on a
motorbike and we thought they were coming after us.
We slowed down, by the time they got very close to us, I
opened the window and fired rapid shots at them, they fell
into the gutter with their motorbike and I sent my boys to
get their rifles before we drove off.
When we got to Coca-Cola junction, there was serious
traffic and we decided to make a turn. When we got to the
spot where the policemen fell, we saw some people who
were 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, but by then, the policemen there had
received message of our operations and the moment they
sighted us, they opened fire and damaged our tyres.
We managed the tyres up to Capitol Road. There was
traffic and I came out of my vehicle to clear the traffic and
there was this Toyota Camry following us.
I didn’t know that there was an armed mobile policeman
in it. When I returned I discovered that Kasali was
struggling with the mobile policeman who was carrying a
rifle.
I fired some shots at the policeman. He attempted to run
away, I chased him and killed him on the spot before
picking his rifle. We snatched another vehicle and
abandoned the Range Rover Sport before we escaped.”
Such was his his ferocious reign of terror.
His arrest
The Lagos State Police Command led by the then
Commissioner, Umar Manko, mandated the Special Anti-
Robbery Squad (SARS), led by Superintendent of Police,
Abba Kyari, to bring an end to the reign of Abbey
Godogodo and that began intensive investigations which
led to the capitulation of his empire.
Manko was given direct orders by the then Inspector
General of Police to make sure the Godogodo phenomenon
was quashed at all all cost.
After the gang attacked the Murtala Mohammed
International Airport, where two police inspectors and
more than five people were killed and over N100 million
stolen, the police decided to focus on profiling the suspect,
because, up to that point, no one knew anything about
him or what he looked like.
The police also began looking at the possibility of
preempting his subsequent operations.
The detectives got a lucky break when a robbery, which
fitted into the established modus operandi of Godogodo’s
gang, was reported at a branch of First Bank in Ilorin,
Kwara State and on obtaining the close circuit television
recording of the operation, his image was then known.
Also, most of his gang members arrested were shown the
video and they all agreed that the man in it was indeed the
One-Eyed bandit and that brought the police a few steps
closer to their target.
The investigation led the police to Dubai where he went
often to buy goods for his boutique, all in a bid to get their
man.
The CP spoke of their break through:
“After we located his house in Ibadan, we mounted
surveillance around the house for 14 days, before we
finally struck and got him. Most of his colleagues that we
had arrested would tell us that the man had the powers to
disappear.
He also used to tell them that anytime it became clear that
he was going to be arrested, it was his dead body that the
police would pick. And before he was killed, he would kill
as many policemen as he could. So, we were very
conscious of that warning.
The operation took us about seven months before we
finally got him that early morning. Even, on that day, after
we had identified the house, policemen waited there for
more than 11 hours.
We didn’t go in and nobody came out of the place. But we
remained patient and continued to consider our options
carefully until he eventually came out. And to prove the
point of what he used to tell his colleagues, we recovered
six AK47 rifles in his kitchen, his bedroom, and toilets,
everywhere.
And each rifle had double magazines attached to it; which
means that in each rifle, he had about 60 rounds of live
ammunition.”
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