One Chance: Inside Abuja’s Unending Crime Wave of Car Abductions and Burglary 

“‘Oya Oya, tell am make him wire us ₦200k before we leave you; if not, na Kaduna we go carry you go like this,” yelled the driver who abducted Precious Joseph during a phone call with her fiancé. 

What was supposed to be a normal evening for Precious, a businesswoman in her thirties in Abuja, North-central Nigeria, turned out to be a harrowing ordeal that left her traumatised. 

It was around 6 p.m. in February when the incident happened. That evening, she was patiently waiting for a roadside taxi in Gwarimpa, popularly called ‘along’, after receiving a call from an unhappy customer waiting at her other shop branch in Garki. 

A green-coloured Golf taxi stopped for her — a lady sat in the front, and two men occupied the rear seat. Unsuspecting, she entered the vehicle after negotiating the fare. It wasn’t until they approached the Oando Filling Station along the Gwarimpa highway that she realised something was deeply wrong.

“The lady in the front started winding up her window; then the driver and the guy next to me did the same,” Precious recounted. “Mine was the only window still down, so the man beside me reached over to wind it up. I refused. That’s when he slapped me.”

Her panic escalated after the driver confirmed her worst fears: “You think say we be normal human beings? You de craze?” She recalled him saying. 

From that moment, she knew she was in the hands of ruthless criminal drivers notorious for robbing and sometimes harming unsuspecting commuters in Abuja. The criminal enterprise is commonly known as ‘one-chance’.

“I told them to take whatever they wanted. But the driver just laughed and said, ‘We don’t want anything from you yet. When we reach where we de go, we go know whether we want something,’” Precious recounted.

Her panic intensified when the driver asked her what she could offer because they had been paid ₦5 million to bring her. 

At that moment, she peed on herself.

An unending crime

Precious is just one of many victims of one-chance operations in Nigeria’s capital city. 

These operations, where criminals disguise themselves as taxi drivers and passengers to lure unsuspecting commuters, are not a new phenomenon. It is not only a menace widely recognised by Abuja residents but also one of the most persistent security threats that has remained a frightening norm in the capital city and other states in Nigeria. 

Several victims told HumAngle that these criminal gangs operate with precision, selecting their victims carefully based on vulnerability, isolation, and distraction. 

Unsuspecting commuters are lured using gang members of any gender, who disguise themselves as everyday passengers. In some cases, these members are scattered along different routes, where they are then picked up by the drivers at intervals to avoid suspicion. Within minutes of the ride, they then reveal their true intentions.

Findings by HumAngle, based on interviews with victims, revealed that some of the hotspots for one-chance operations in Abuja include but are not limited to the Gwarimpa expressway, Wuse, Berger Roundabout, Area 1, Central Area, Jabi, and Lugbe Axis.

Though there is no publicly available data specific to one-chance victims or incidents in Nigeria, a report published by The Guardian, a Nigerian newspaper, revealed that over 100 cases have been recorded since 2015. 

Some of these tragic incidents, as also reported by HumAngle in the past, have led to injuries and, in some cases, death due to their inability to provide a police report. This raises concerns about how much value is being placed on the lives of average citizens.

In June 2024, Prisca Chikodi, a personnel of the Directorate of Road Traffic Services (DRTS), was killed by one-chance operators after boarding a vehicle at Area 1 bus stop. Her body was later found in Utako, with no visible signs of gunshot wounds or stabbing.

This year, precisely in February, a social media clip revealed how two suspected one-chance operators were apprehended by mobs in Lugbe. The suspects had allegedly picked up a young woman, who raised an alarm upon sensing danger. Bystanders intercepted the vehicle, rescued her, and took justice into their own hands.

Kabir Adamu, a security expert and the director of Abuja-based Beacon Security Intelligence, explained that despite attempts by previous commissioners of police and the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) to end the menace through the banning of illegal parks, advocacy, and arresting drivers or vehicles that are not registered, it has not succeeded in reducing the crime in the FCT.

He also revealed that the lack of efficient public transportation in the capital city is one of the reasons why ‘one-chance’ remains a growing menace that needs urgent attention, as residents increasingly experience horrific ordeals.

“Public transportation is not adequately provided in the FCT, which is principally a working city with a lot of workers with limited public transportation arrangements. The need for transportation is extremely high, and those who cannot afford to use the registered taxis will now have to depend on less expensive rides, making them more vulnerable to criminals. Until we address public transportation needs in the FCT, I’m afraid to say this challenge will remain with us,” Kabir told HumAngle. 

Some victims of one-chance incidents revealed that their horrifying experiences have pushed them to use alternative and, to a certain extent, safer modes of transportation, like ride-sharing apps for commuting within the capital city. 

Mardiya Umar, another victim of the one-chance crime, told HumAngle that even though ride-sharing apps have their share of challenges, they offer a much safer alternative compared to on-the-spot taxis, which are mostly used for one-chance operations in Abuja. 

“[Ride-sharing apps] are not completely a haven; it is just something we are trying to explore, but I will say that it is safer, and right now, I don’t even care about the exorbitant prices.  If I can afford it, why not? If I can’t afford to be somewhere at a particular time, I’d rather stay in my house because the trust issue is still there,” Mardiya said. 

The extortion spree

For Precious, the horror was far from over.

After inflicting physical harm, the criminals ensured that her nightmare extended beyond just that. They were not merely looking for cash and valuables; they wanted access to her bank accounts.

Before then, the woman, a member of the one-chance syndicate, seated in the front seat, demanded her phone and bag. As she scoured through her belongings, they found her credit card. That signalled the commencement of the extortion spree.

“I had ₦27,000 cash that I made from my shop in Kagini before leaving; she then asked me how much I had in my account,” Precious recalled. 

Due to the psychological and physical horrors she was experiencing, she explained to them that she had three bank accounts but was only carrying the card for one. They ordered her to transfer all the money from the other accounts into the one linked to the available card so they could withdraw it.

Under duress, she complied, giving them access to her account and transaction PIN.

As they continued the journey, one of the criminals got out at multiple locations to withdraw cash from her account. She remembers them saying, “This money never do. E be like say this girl get money.” 

Helpless and trapped in the backseat, she had no way to resist. 

A desperate plea for help

As the one-chance criminals continued their crime spree stretching through the night, Precious’s phone rang — it was her fiancé calling to query why she hadn’t reached, as the customer was still waiting for her. Her fiancé was in the shop when she left for Garki and promised to come back as soon as possible so that they could go home together.

“They gave me the phone and told me to tell him I had been kidnapped. They demanded that I tell him to transfer ₦200,000 or they would take me to Kaduna,” about four hours away in Nigeria’s North West.

The moment she spoke, he suspected something was off and asked if she was okay. She had barely responded before they took the phone from her, demanding a ransom from him, threatening to take her to an undisclosed location where they could extract even more money if he didn’t comply. 

Her fiancé begged them, told them he didn’t have the money and that the bank network was bad. But they just kept repeating, “Na you no bail am o.”

About 30 minutes later, Precious’ fiancé sent money into the account as instructed, and the criminals withdrew the amount before letting her go. The horrifying seven hours left her disoriented, alone, and vulnerable.

“I wasn’t aware that they were on the Abuja-Kaduna highway until they dropped me in a nearby bush. I had to trek out to the express,” Precious said. 

Vehicles sped by, none stopping to help her. It is a dangerous stretch of highway, and no driver wants to risk falling victim to another crime. She kept walking until she found a vehicle that brought her back to Abuja.

Between trauma and a flawed system

At the centre of one-chance and car break-ins in Abuja, victims juggle between overcoming trauma and the lack of effective law enforcement response to track criminals, either through car registration linked to phone numbers, Bank Verification Number (BVN), or National Identity Number in the event of such crimes.

After enduring physical abuses (especially for one-chance victims), financial losses, and psychological trauma, some victims told HumAngle that they don’t even report the incidents to security operatives due to the hurdles they are likely to face. Even those who report barely get help.

Mary Akwu is one such victim.

She entered a one-chance vehicle along the Gwarimpa expressway and was beaten by the criminals, leaving her with a swollen face. When she visited the police station at Games Village in Garki the following day, the officers told her that the crime happened outside their jurisdiction, so they referred her to the Wuye division. 

After meeting with the Divisional Police Officer at Wuye, she was asked to visit a hospital and her bank before they could proceed with the case.

When she returned the next day, the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) assigned to the case told her that she needed to make some payments to cover the running cost of the investigation, but since she didn’t have the money in her account due to the incident, he told her to go and work for some months to gather the amount needed – she left without help from the police, only with the physical and mental scars of the incidents.

Since then, Mary has been caught up in traumatic rollercoasters. She told HumAngle that the experience from that incident made her scared of everything.

“I had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” she said. “I would scream in my sleep at night. I was scared of going anywhere. Everybody seemed like they were going to hurt me. I avoided every male figure around me. Unconsciously, I was traumatised. I got a job and had to quit because of how the man was talking to me. I didn’t trust him.”

They transferred ₦530,000 from her account, most of which belonged to her church group. When she reported the incident to the church, her pastor notified the church’s head of security, who advised them to move the case to the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Abuja.

On getting there, the FCID informed them that they would write to the initial IPO at Wuye to transfer the case. Before then, they also requested some payments be made to ‘facilitate’ the process. 

“We paid, and they told us they were going to work on the case. They called me like two times to get the bank details and some other things. Since then, I haven’t heard from FCID and the IPO. Even the suspect whose account the money was traced to was unreachable,” Mary told HumAngle. 

Aside from the cash, the criminals went away with her jewellery. 

“I haven’t recovered anything. I’m still working on balancing my life,” she said. 

Security experts like Kabir believe that greater synergy and less territorial behaviour among public security managers would allow government agencies and private sector players to combine their cybersecurity strengths and better support efforts to combat these crimes.

“The public security cybersecurity capability is extremely weak, and its refusal to integrate the non-security cybersecurity component that we have is also a huge challenge. We have the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy, where we have parastatals like the Nigerian Communications Commission and Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency that have enormous capability to support the sector, but because of the territorial nature of our public security managers, they don’t see these players as capable of supporting them,” he said. 

“So, what they are trying to do is to raise their capabilities independent of this other existing one, and because of that, you now see a huge gap, and it’s affecting virtually everything cyber-related in the country.”

Emmanuel Onwubiko, the National Coordinator of the Human Rights Writers of Nigeria, added that one-chance operators are exploiting existing loopholes within certain government agencies to execute their plans and unleash violence on citizens.  

While calling for the installation of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) for improved intelligence across the FCT, Onwubiko said synergy between the police, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), and other security forces will help fight the crimes of one-chance and car burglary.

“It is important that the government examines the state of the FRSC because it has collapsed. The licensing management system has collapsed. All kinds of people are driving without properly registered information somewhere because the FRSC cannot even produce licences swiftly,” he noted.

On the recurring complaints that police officers often demand money from victims before investigating their cases, Josephine Adeh, the FCT Police Public Relations Officer, told HumAngle that the command maintains a zero-tolerance policy towards unprofessional conduct.

“Incidents of one-chance robbery in the FCT have been reduced to the barest minimum,” she said. “The current Commissioner of Police has employed extensive and strategic tactics to effectively combat one-chance activities within the FCT. These proactive measures have yielded positive results, as evidenced by the significantly low, often non-existent reports of such incidents in recent times.”

The police spokesperson added that the FCT Command works closely with victims of one-chance robberies who come forward to report their cases, insisting that no one is ever asked to pay before their complaints are addressed. 

“The Command remains committed to providing professional and compassionate support to all victims of crime,” she added.

But for Precious, Mary, and the many others who have suffered at the hands of one-chance and car break-in syndicates, the trauma runs far deeper than financial loss. While some bruises have faded with time, the psychological scars linger. And as long as the criminal networks continue to exploit gaps in the system and prey on unsuspecting commuters, the sense of fear and vulnerability remains, a heavy price for simply trying to get home or to work.