Robbers operate haulage business, steal multi-million naira goods

Twenty-eight-year-old Emeka Nathaniel, a truck driver who specialised in interstate and intrastate haulage of goods had hoped to get his usual service fee of between N200,000 and N350,000 (depending on how large the cargo is) when he was contacted by one of the clearing and forwarding agents who gave him such businesses.
Price was agreed and there and then, 222 large Jumbo tyres used by trailers were loaded into his truck. In total, N11m worth of tyres were handed over to Nathaniel, whom the contractor believed could not possibly do anything shady with the goods. Destination was a warehouse at Kirikiri area of Lagos.

But by nightfall on February 27, 2015, Nathaniel had disappeared with the goods.

Operatives of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Department of Investigation (Annex), Adeniji-Adele in Lagos, who had been tipped off many days later about a shady business going on at a warehouse in Ikeja area of the state, stormed the place and succeeded in recovering the entire goods.

A police source involved in the investigations at the FSARS, told our correspondent that when Nathaniel who drove the truck was arrested along with his conductor, 32-year-old Haruna Saidu, information emerged about how they met a member of a syndicate who specialised in diverting goods and selling them off.

“Recent cases have shown that the operations of this syndicate have become common in Lagos now. They are on the prowl around the Nigerian Port in Apapa and other parts of Lagos. The members target those who need haulage services to transport their goods from one part of the country to another. They simply take the goods, collect the transport fee and disappear with the loads,” the police officer said.

The member of the syndicate, Azubuike Olumba, promised Nathaniel an offer he could not resist.

“He promised that I would be paid N8m as soon as I delivered the goods at Ikeja,” Nathaniel told the police.

However, Saidu (conductor) still thought they were indeed going to deliver the goods at Kirikiri until they started to unload the goods at Ikeja.

“He said when he queried his driver why they were unloading the goods at the wrong destination, the driver quickly gave him N150,000 to keep him quiet. Nathaniel still believed he was getting N8m out of the deal,” the police investigator in charge of the case said.

Saturday PUNCH learnt that as soon as the truck disappeared and the owner of the goods learnt that it had not arrived at the delivery point as scheduled, he reported at the Area B Police Command in Apapa. But the police at the station had no clue. Soon, the owner of the tyres lost all hope that the goods would ever be found until he got a call from FSARS operatives.

Four other suspects are in custody over the robbery – Kelechi Igbokwe (43) and Peter Eigbogbo (46), who escorted the vehicle to Ikeja and two potential buyers – Eze John and Kennedy Okoye who were tyre traders called in to buy some of the goods.

Saturday PUNCH learnt that after a successful operation, the robbers destroy their number plate and repaint the vehicle.

The police eventually traced the truck to the office of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority.

“The suspects parked the vehicle at Mile 12, having removed the number plate and left it there. LASTMA officials who saw it there later impounded it and towed it to their office,” the police said.

Meanwhile, operatives of FSARS also recently apprehended another cartel with a similar modus operandi.

On January 9, 2015, 37-year-old Taye Adejumo, an Oyo State transporter, who runs a supposed haulage business, took delivery of 1,200 30-litre kegs of vegetable oil, which he was supposed to deliver in Abuja.

The vegetable oil was worth N7m.

But unknown to the contractor, through whom Adejumo got the transaction, the N250,000 haulage fee, was never his target.

In fact, according to the police, Adejumo bought his DAF 85 truck solely for stealing and diverting goods.

That day, rather than proceed to Abuja and collect the N120,000 outstanding part of his fee, Adejumo, who believed he could become a millionaire from the venture, colluded with his driver, 34-year-old Taoreed Kasali, and his conductor, 39-year-old Ibrahim Saheed, and diverted the goods to Ikorodu, where they began to sell the oil to traders at cheaper price.

With the help of an accomplice who posed as sales agent of the company that manufactures the oil, the robbers successfully sold N4.5m worth of the oil to unsuspecting traders at Ikorodu Market who believed they were lucky to get the product cheaply.

Adejumo said when he started the business of diverting goods, he started with fuel.

He told the police that he successfully diverted and sold off a tanker-load of fuel. But after many months of investigations by the police, he was caught and he was forced to pay back the worth of the fuel to the owner.

“At the time, I was still renting the tanker I used to transport the oil. I paid N600,000 to the man I rented the tanker from but made millions of naira from the business until I was arrested at Sagamu. After I paid off the money to the owner of the oil and I was released, I later bought my own truck for the purpose of diverting goods,” he said.

He explained that each of the kegs of vegetable oil he diverted was supposed to be sold for about N5,850 but they sold it for N5,500 and after making about N4.5m, he paid Kasali N350,000 and Saheed N280,000.

“After we caught them, only 182 of the 1,200 kegs of vegetable oil could be recovered along with about N1m,” one of the police investigators in charge of the case told Saturday PUNCH.

Spokesperson of the FSARS, Mr. Lekan Ogundare, a deputy superintendent of police, said these cases should serve as a lesson for businessmen not to patronise roadside haulage businesses.

“We would advise Nigerians to ensure that anytime they hand over their goods to any haulage service, there should be proper documentation about the identity of the haulage company and about the chain of custody of the goods. This would allow them to have enough information to work on in the eventuality of a problem as we have seen in these cases,” Ogundare said.