Prince Bubacarr Aminata Sankanu, the deputy Government Spokesperson was robbed last weekend on his way home, with robbers doing away with his dual SIM Samsung Galaxy phone with a residual value of D6000, containing Africell and Qcell lines; photo-chromic eyeglasses valued at D14,000 and D1,200 cash from his pockets.
Speaking to the media, Sankanu said the robbery “happened in the early hours of Sunday, 2 July, 2023 on his way home from a small function organised by his classmates of the UTG Faculty of Law. “My colleagues accompanied me up to the Brusubi Roundabout and since I did not want to burden them further, I alighted from their private vehicle with the intention of taking a taxi to my residence in Wullinkama. I am a regular user of public transport like everyone else and I have to struggle when commuting gets tough. After a while, I could not get a taxi and decided to walk home which normally takes some 20 minutes,” he said.
Sankanu said the gang that surprised him half-way around Brusubi Phase One, had asked for help to know what time it was. He said as he was innocently checking his phone to tell them what time it was, “they started insulting his mother, President Barrow and aggressively grabbed his phone away. “One of them took my blazer off my body and searched the pockets as the other was trying to find other valuables from my trousers. It was a surreal scene of a ram surrounded by hungry wolves. It was dark and I could not recognise their faces but I could tell they were armed with sharp objects pointed at me and were smelling of illicit drugs. After a while, they threw my blazer back to me and disappeared with my phone, eyeglasses and cash. I was petrified. If I, as a top-ranking official of the government and an academic, can be so vulnerable to such naked violence, I empathise with the common man,” Sankanu said.
“I am grateful for my life. The phone and other stuff grabbed from me at a life-threatening point are replaceable. I cannot recognise the two front guys who assaulted me or their accomplices in the background. I was more focused on getting away from that macabre scene unhurt. Those are unhygienic and unpleasant characters that no reasonable person would voluntarily spend even a minute associating with. I am not used to going out late at night so I was unprepared and did not know how to handle nocturnal characters disguised as time enquirers,” he said.
Sankanu has since lodged a complaint at the Brusubi Police Station which is leading the investigations into the robbery.
