How Kidnappers Wired up Teenager to Rob Bank in Jos

Benjamin Basil had a problem: he had to choose between robbing a bank suicide-fashion or losing his life.

And time was his enemy.

So he got off the Okada those that sent him paid to ferry him, and picked his way to his target: a UBA branch at Dadindowa, Jos.

His original destination that morning was the Plateau State Polytechnic to take his lectures. He couldn’t help it.

There are not so many things a 17-year-old in ND 1 level can change. Like when a kidnapper grabbed him that morning, took his money and his phone, and strapped around his waist some contraption they told him would explode. 

His survival, he told reporters, depended on how he could walk into that bank, and walk out with millions stuffed in two duffel bags the criminals handed him.

The police wouldn’t swallow his fairy tale though.

But he yarned it still: how they asked him to raise his arms while they wired him up; his refusal that got him a threat of hot leads pouring into him.

“They told me that what they just wrapped up my waist was a suicide bomb,” Basil said.

“They searched me and took my phone and money and after a while, they gave it back to me. Then they told me that they would take me to the bank, handed over two bags to me and instructed me to bring N100m.”

With more instruction drummed into his head, he took up the challenge.

“When I met the cashier inside the bank, he agreed that he wouldn’t call for help,” he said.

Basil felt secure too that the heist would succeed. There were a dozen of coarse men wielding AK-47 outside giving him a cover. He could just get the cashier to fill up the bags, and he’d walk to safety where the kidnappers would undo the bomb.

“But suddenly I noticed that everybody in the bank started running.”

The commotion scared him, particularly when he remembered the kidnappers’ threat to storm the bank, and unleash mayhem.

“So I ran outside and the bank security officials dragged me down.”

The bomb didn’t go off even in the struggle.

Plateau police command boss Emmanuel Olugbenga told journalists that the thing strapped on Basil contained no explosives.

But an investigation has started.

Basil will do more than talk to convince the police authorities his story was true.