The last time Noel Mamah, a student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and entrepreneur, travelled to Lagos from Nigeria, he was robbed at gunpoint.

Noel boarded a bus from the Young Shall Grow Transport Company on the night of December 14, 2023, and arrived in Lagos the following morning.

The next course of events not only terrified him but also made him lose faith in the Nigerian Police Force. The bus Noel boarded stopped at Mazamaza, near Festac Town, Lagos. After alighting, he went to answer the call of nature.

That was when it happened. Four men who were putting on orange reflective jackets accosted him. “Do you live in Lagos?” One of them asked.

Noel shook his head. Another one pointed at the bus he had just alighted from and asked if he was a passenger on the bus.

“I told them I do not live in Lagos and they asked if I didn’t know I was not supposed to urinate there. They started beating me, and I was pleading with them. I told them I was ready to pay the fine if there was any,” said Noel.

The men pushed him into a minibus and drove off. The bus halted when they got to an uncompleted building where Noel was held hostage by the strange men.

“One of them had a gun and another had a knife. They threatened to kill me. They told me that when they were done with me, I would know Lagos is not the east,” he told FIJ.

The men forced Noel into the uncompleted building. While they were there, he was ordered to open his bank app. “I had about N5 million in my Moniepoint bank account, and they asked me to transfer the money or they would kill me.”

Noel told FIJ one of the men came in with a POS operator and then they asked him to transfer N100,000. The POS operator gave the men cash.

“After making the transaction, I was asked to transfer N4,950,000 to an Opay account with account name Abdulazeez Mohammed Mukaila,” said Noel.

According to Noel, the men held him hostage until around 8 pm that night and released him. After he was released, Noel, who had no idea where he was, asked passersby. “They told me I was around Justrite, Dangote Expressway, Oshodi.”

The next day, he went to a police station in Oshodi to lodge complaints, and the policemen asked him to pay the sum of N50,000 before they could start investigations. Noel could not pay because he had lost all the money he had to the armed robbers.

Dejected and disappointed, he left the station. Noel embarked on a journey back to Enugu later that night. He contacted the Lagos State Police Command via their official Twitter handle to lodge complaints but was asked to visit the nearest police station to the scene.

Noel has been unable to go back because he is back in Enugu and also because he was asked to pay some money the last time he was there. He also contacted his bank’s customer care agent.

“They told me they had contacted Opay but there was no update from them (Opay) yet,” Noel told FIJ.

FIJ contacted Benjamin Hundeyin, the police public relations officer for Lagos State Police Command, via his telephone number, but there was no response from him as of press time.

“I have no hope in the police again,” Noel told FIJ.