Narrow escape: how robbers almost caught us on a lonely highway

"It was a few days after my dad’s burial and we were on our way back to Lagos state from Imo state by road. It’s about eight hours with many lonely road sections along the way.

We’d just passed Ore area when I noticed a guy standing in the middle of the road. It didn’t occur to me that he could be anything other than some random dude trying to cross the highway. Suddenly, I looked closer and noticed the guy was carrying a big gun. I shouted at the driver who was still speeding along that the guy was armed and he should turn around. When the driver saw this, we were already too close so he said that turning so sharply might get us into worse trouble. 

He decided to risk a full on ‘rush’ towards the armed guy by accelerating more. I don’t think the guy was expecting that reaction so he jumped off the road when we almost rammed into him. When we zoomed past, he turned around and fired a shot at us – it hit part of our car behind and we all ducked. Wow …it was crazy.

We were travelling with two cars and the second one had my aunt and family driver in it and they were behind. I called my aunt’s mobile and told her that armed guys were ahead so they needed to turn around. While we drove on, our driver signaled cars that were moving in the opposite direction – towards the robbers – that there were armed robbers on the road so they needed to stop; many of them stopped and it caused a huge pile up on the highway.  My aunt also called us that they had stopped along with many cars coming behind them because they were spreading the message that armed robbers were ahead. 

She said from where they parked along with over thirty other cars, they could see the robbers in the far distance who appeared like dots to them; they were about seven guys. With the other motorists, they discussed their options on moving on and some guys, luckily, had police emergency numbers so the police were called to come to the area.

When the robbers noticed that cars were not coming up on either side of the highway, they jumped on their motorcycles and started heading towards my aunt and the other cars. People noticed and took to their heels, locking their cars and heading into the dense forest beside the road.

After a few minutes, the police arrived in their truck and began to exchange fire with the robbers. After some time, the better equipped mobile police guys also came on the scene and that was when the robbers took off. The police later explained that they’d had to call for mobile police back up when the boys would not stop shooting.

After the robbers took off, the policemen checked out the area before giving everyone the 'go ahead' to move on. I’d heard many stories of these highway robberies but had never witnessed one until now. We were lucky and blessed to have escaped being victims.