New York [RR] OSUN—when Williams Ogundeji, 30, a commercial motorbike rider planned to leave Osun State to Lagos, his intention was to come and search for greener pasture.

Thinking that being friendly was one of the cardinal rules to getting a job, Ogundeji became very cordial with everybody. His cheerful and outgoing nature, however, led to his downfall.

He was drugged by his passenger, who lured him to an eatery and laced his drink with 20 tablets of a drug called Super Apeti, which induces sleep.

This made Ogundeji to sleep for 48 hours. The Super Apeti, a Multivitamin tablet, is supposed to be taken once a day.

Ogundeji, who claimed to have been a commercial motorcyclist at Osun for many years, explained that after graduating from Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, for many years, he could not secure any employment.

To keep body and soul together and not to be a liability to anybody, Ogundeji decided to travel to Lagos, to continue his commercial motorbike business.

He was however hopeful that in the course of riding his motorbike for money, he would get a good job with his degree certificate.

But since his encounter with James Iheme, who doped him just to steal his motorbike, Ogundeji had become very wary of strangers.

He said: “I have learnt my lesson! To even greet strangers now is difficult for me. Moreover, I have only spent three months in Lagos when this thing happened to me. Now, if I board commercial buses, I try to make sure that my body does not come in contact with anyone. I can’t trust anybody!”

Ogundeji’s distrust of strangers started that fateful August 23, 2010, after he picked Iheme at Ketu Bus stop, but was later drugged by the suspect.

Ogundeji explained that he was waiting at Ketu bus stop for passengers just like most commercial bike riders, when Iheme approached him.

He said: “ I believe it was on a Monday. The time was about 8pm. He told me that he was going to Magodo, at Isheri.

“I told him his money was N100. He accepted. We were close to the Magodo gate, near Royal eatery, when he said I should stop, that his friend wanted to give him some money. I stopped, he brought out his phone and called the person.

“I didn’t know what they discussed. He suddenly handed his phone over to me. The man on the line told me that I should not be angry, that I should wait for him, just for 10 minutes, so that he could bring the money to my passenger.

“He asked me where we were, I said close to Royal eatery. He said we go there and enjoy ourselves.

“This man(Iheme) bought a bottle of Sprite and Five Alive; the small pack. We started drinking. Suddenly police surrounded us. I started shouting that I was not a robber! I was not a robber!

“The policemen searched everywhere around the area we were sitting but found nothing. Suddenly, I didn’t know what happened next. When I woke up, I thought it was the following day.

“I saw a policewoman who told me that I had been sleeping for like two days. I couldn’t believe that I had slept for a whole two days!”

Police spokesman, Frank Mba, explained that what led to the arrest of the suspect took place precisely at Royal eatery, Magodo, in Shangisha, Lagos.

He said: “Iheme had early on taken a commercial motorcycle from Ketu bus stop; he eventually managed to trick the motorcyclist to Royal eatery with a grand design to drug him and steal his motorcycle.

“He had the Five Alive juice pack in his pocket as at the time he left his home and walked into the eatery, and when he got there, all he did was to order for a bottle of Sprite drink and then walked back to join the victim. But before he got to where the victim was sitting, he pulled out the Five Alive pack of juice from his pocket.

“He pretended as if he had just bought the Five Alive juice from the sales attendant at the eatery. He put the drinks on the table, but cleverly made sure that the victim took the Five Alive, which he had drugged from home. The victim lost consciouness!”

Mba said that after Iheme had successfully given Ogundeji the fruit juice and they were on the verge of leaving the eatery, apparently to take Ogundeji somewhere to conclude his criminal intentions, the manager, who seemed to have been monitoring the suspicious movement of both men, feared they might be robbers and quickly alerted the police. This call however turned out to be the saving grace for Ogundeji.

Iheme, 36, explained that he meant the victim no harm. Even though the police believe that he meant to harm Ogundeji, Iheme claimed that he was only after his motorbike.

“Yes, I brought the Five Alive from home and kept it hidden in my pocket. I put 20 tablets of Super Apeti into the juice. I knew it would not harm him because I had used the drug myself. No, I don’t use 20 at once, I used to ingest two or three tablets if I wanted to sleep.”

Although Iheme said nobody sold the idea to him on how to drug a commercial bike rider and steal his motorbike after he had fallen asleep, police however said that he was doing the dirty operation in connivance with some other people, whose names he had refused to mention .

Even when he was asked to mention the name of the man that spoke with Ogundeji after they stopped at Royal eatery, he said there was no one, insisting that the bike rider spoke with no one.

The police also believe that Iheme had been into this crime for long, but he claimed it was his first time.

Even as investigators hazard guesses that he wanted to use Ogundeji for ritual purposes, Iheme, a father of one, said: “All I wanted was just his motorbike! I didn’t want to sell it but use it for commercial purpose. I used to ride Okada myself, but it didn’t belong to me. I wanted to have my own Okada! Nobody taught me how to lace juice with that Super Apeti tablets. I know that it used to induce somebody to sleep. I know it would not kill the man. This is my first time of trying this. If this is not my first operation, let me or my only two-year-old son die!”

Mba urged members of the public on transit to be careful what they eat and drink.

“Investigation is not concluded,” he said. “We want to advice citizens, particularly those that make use of commercial motorcycle and other forms of mass transportation to be careful about what they eat or drink while in transit with their customers. We intend to send sample of this drink to a laboratory.”

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