Armed robbers attack journalist in Edo

Armed robbers on Monday night attacked a photojournalist, Lucky Agie, in Benin, the Edo State capital, and dispossessed him of his D-90 camera worth N400,000 and other valuables.

Agie, a freelance photojournalist with the Sun Newspaper, was attacked along Akpakpava road at about 8pm after boarding a taxi on his way home at the close of work. Agie said the robbers also dispossessed him of his ATM card, identity cards, phones and cash.

Narrating his ordeal to journalists at a private hospital where he is receiving treatment, Agie said he decided to take a taxi after watching the first half of the Cameroon vs. Nigeria match at the Nigeria Union of Journalists’ Press Centre, as his vehicle had developed a fault.

“I boarded the vehicle with some passengers including a lady at Akpakpava, but on getting to Second Junction, near Total Filling Station, one of the passengers alighted and another entered who now sat with me in the front seat.

He said immediately the passenger entered, they started hitting him with objects ordering him to surrender his belongings while the vehicle was still moving.

Agie added that they continued the beating and eventually pushed him out of the moving vehicle.

He said a Good Samaritan later took him to the hospital as a result of the injuries he sustained from the beating.

Meanwhile, Edo State Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Roland Osakue, during a visit to the injured journalist, noted that the attack on journalists by armed robbers has become alarming.

He called on security agencies in the state to check the spate of criminality as many journalists have been robbed of their belongings.