THE Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has claimed that the state did not record any incident of bank robbery in the last four years.
Sanwo-Olu made the claim on Tuesday, December 12, 2023 at the 17th Town Hall Meeting on security organised by the Lagos State Security Trust Fund held at the Eko Hotels & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Sanwo-Olu attributed the development to continuously reviewing the State’s security architecture and surveillance measures.
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“Celebrating a milestone in security as Lagos achieves four consecutive years of zero bank robberies, marking a significant improvement in safety across the state.
“Our relentless efforts in enhancing security have yielded results. At the 17th Town Hall meeting on security, we discussed the progress made and strategies to further fortify safety in Lagos State,” the governor said.
CLAIM
Lagos state recorded zero bank robbery in four years.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MOSTLY TRUE.
To verify this claim, our researcher analysed data by National Security Tracker (NST), a project of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that documents data on violent incidents in Nigeria based on media reports. We filtered it to Lagos state and narrowed it to bank-related robberies.
According to the data, there was no reported bank-related armed robbery incident between December 2019 and June 2023 when the data was last updated.
However, only one case of attack on banks was recorded within the period. This occurred in February 2023 when hoodlums in the Epe area of Lagos State attacked some banks. The banks attacked include Zenith, Access and Keystone, the Punch reported. The development led to the temporary shutdown of these banks.
Further review of media reports shows that some men attempted to rob a bank at Oko Oba, Lagos in September 2023. But the attack was unsuccessful as it was foiled by the quick intervention of the Police.
The Punch reported that the suspects were breaking the security doors to gain entry when men of the state police command stormed the scene to prevent the attack.
Moreover, the FactCheckHub could not independently sourced data of bank robbery incident in Lagos state for July – December 2023, as there was no crime statistics available on the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website. The most recent crime statistics on NBS was that of 2017.
THE VERDICT
The claim by Governor Sanwo-Olu that Lagos state recorded zero armed robbery in four years is MOSTLY TRUE; a review of NST data has shown.
Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via [email protected] and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.
