Kunle Akerele, aka Kunle Poly, the 29-year-old leader of an armed robbery gang, has revealed why his gang cut off three fingers of a man at Aboru, Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, during a robbery operation.
According to him, he and his accomplices chopped off the man’s fingers for refusing to hand over his gold-plated wedding ring when they asked him to do so.
The suspect, when paraded alongside five of his gang members, said: “We were not wicked when we started but the people made us to become wicked. Victims were always deceiving us that they had no money at home.
Our anger was that when we knocked on people’s doors, they would hide their expensive phones and give us the less expensive ones. One day, my second-in-command suggested that we should start teaching them lessons so that others would learn from them.
So we bought sharp cutlasses which we began using in severing stubborn victims’ hands. On January 13 this year, we raided the Aboru community because we were cash-strapped. .
We were surprised that each house we entered they would bring small Nokia phones as if they planned it.
We were surprised when we entered one big man’s house who parked posh cars in front of his compound. .
We requested for phones but he gave us small phones. We saw the expensive wedding ring on his finger. But he was behaving as if it was too difficult for him to remove.
So Tunde said we should cut off his three fingers and remove the ring. And we did. Immediately the wife saw what happened, she quickly removed her own. .
When we saw how the game worked out well for us, we went back to the other victims that had given us small phones and gave them machete cuts on their hands, fingers or wrists, and continued like that in other houses. .
Those who gave us big phones and laptops were spared. We cut off over 20 people’s wrists that day. We did it so that the news would spread and when we come the next time, people would bring out their money quickly.
How could it be said that people no longer use expensive phones? Those who dared us regretted their actions.”
