Armed Bandits Storm Supermarket, Cart Away Foodstuffs in Enugu

It was like a scene from a Nollywood film Monday evening at the famous and ever busy Onuasata roundabout in Enugu as armed bandits robbed a popular supermarket, Uzorbest Super-market Limited, while passersby and motorists passed oblivious of the robbery going on at Onu Asata Junction of Enugu metropolis, carting away goods worth over one million naira. The robbery was an uncommon on as the robbers busied themselves carting away 18 bags of 50kg foreign and local rice, 10 bags of 10kg rice; 30 cartons of noodles and five bags of 20kg semolina making even other shoppers and curious onlookers feel they were filmmakers acting out a scene or security personnel buying foodstuff for their agency.

They even also took away four giant cooking gas cylinders from a neighbouring shop and seemed unperturbed by the possible arrival of security men.

According to the store-man,the robbers came in three Hilux jeeps in commando-style at about 6:00 p.m. on Monday and numbered about 15 men and wore black face masks and one of them kept shouting “load these bags quickly.”

The store-man Sunday Ngwoke recanted that “At first I thought they were government officials that came to check for the standard of the products.”

“I struggled to stop one of them from taking the first bag of rice but when I saw the big gun one of them was holding, I restricted myself.”

He lamented; “They parked the whole items I mentioned to you earlier and loaded it into the three Hilux jeeps as commanded by one of them.”

“Before they left, they started shooting sporadically into the air and scared everybody away.”

However, he expressed gratitude to God that “no one was hurt throughout the incident and they did not take a kobo from the supermarket, just the foodstuffs and the four giant cooking gas cylinders from our neighbour,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Enugu PPRO, ASP Daniel Ndukwe, said that the command was yet to get a brief of the incident from the Divisional Police Officer at Ogui Division promising that”The command will establish contact with the DPO in the area and get full details of the incident,” and gave the assurance that the command “will issue an official statement on the incident after being briefed by the Ogui DPO”