Armed gunmen reportedly kill driver, leave commuters stranded on Benin-Ore Expressway

Commuters along the Benin-Ore Expressway were thrown into palpable fear in the early hours of Wednesday, March 10, when gunmen reportedly attacked some luxury buses heading to the Eastern part of the country from Lagos.

According to a report issued by the Daily Trust, the driver of one of the buses was shot dead in the incident which reportedly happened between two military checkpoints in Ondo State.

It was further reported that two of the buses attacked belong to the Young Shall Grow while another is operated by Ifeanyichukwu Motors.

Consequently, this incident led to the blockage of the ever-busy expressway by the luxury bus operators.

According to an eyewitness account, the armed gunmen used a Sienna car which they snatched earlier, to block the Luxury buses which left Jibowu in Lagos on Tuesday night.

The Sienna car was reportedly conveying three passengers but the driver was pushed out of the vehicle before they used it to carry out the operation.

Immediately the luxury bus drivers sighted the roadblock, they sensed that armed robbers were ahead and they attempted to retreat but they were waylaid.

It was in the process that one of the drivers was killed.

A passenger, who was in a bus with registration number SMK 732 XD, said the driver was killed because he refused to open the passenger cabin for the robbers to enter the bus.

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“The robbers were armed to the teeth. They wore army camouflage. They had already shot the driver of a Young Shall Grow bus behind us.

“The driver whose hand was pierced with bullets would be in his 50s. He must have sacrificed himself to save the passengers because he was the only person who could open the passenger cabin.

“The robbers then turned to our bus. We were all lying face down. They shot our driver also in the hand but they took to their heels when soldiers were approaching. After they shot our driver, we had to jump out through the window into the bush. We all ran into different directions in the bush and I even had cut in the process.”

Another witness said the soldiers claimed to have killed one of the robbers during a gun battle.

“We didn’t see any corpse but they said they carried the corpse away in one of their Hilux vehicles,” the passenger said.

The Police in Ondo and Edo States are yet to issue official statements regarding this incident.

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