Albert Emejulu, popularly known as Obi on TikTok, built a following during his service year by helping aspiring and current corps members navigate their NYSC experience and providing tips to ease the process.
In June 2026, a bus ride in Lagos turned into a kidnapping incident. He was beaten, robbed, and used as bait to extort ₦500,000 from his family, while the police station where the incident was reported stood by and did nothing.
This is Albert’s story, as told to Orame.
I left Calabar for Lagos on June 5, 2026. I needed to attend a friend’s birthday and reconnect with old classmates. I also wanted to try my hand at content creation and job hunting.
While in Lagos, I stayed with my friend on the mainland, and he pushed me to learn the roads myself rather than hide inside Ubers like every other newcomer.
One rainy evening, around 5:30 PM, I mistakenly dropped off at the wrong place. I had gone to the Island and was trying to head back to the mainland. I took a train from Mile 2 to Oshodi, but I had miscalculated. I tried calling my friend, but his line wasn’t going through.
It was all so confusing, for me and the rain at the same time. I asked a market woman for directions, and she calmly pointed me to a spot where I could board a bus to my destination. A younger guy stood next to me, and we both boarded together.
When I stepped inside, there were about six other men scattered across the seats, along with an elderly woman in the front. Seeing that woman gave me a sense of safety. The bus wasn’t full, but I didn’t think much of it.
I sat down, put on my AirPods, and focused on my phone, editing a video and finishing a job application.
A few minutes later, the woman got off. Soon after, the driver pulled over near a secluded area with bushes and unfinished buildings. He stepped out, claiming he was going to buy fuel. That was the last time I ever saw him.
With the driver gone, one of the men sitting in front of me turned around and faced me. “Guy, make I see that your phone,” he said.
I paused my music, confused. He repeated himself and reached out to grab it. I pulled my phone back and asked why he was trying to take it. I tried to slide the phone into my pocket to end the argument, but he stood up and snatched it right out of my hand.
I started complaining loudly to the other passengers in the bus. “Guy, see as this guy take my phone! Why would he do that?”
Nobody moved. Nobody said a word.
That silence told me everything. The whole bus was a setup.
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One of the men told me to calm down. Another man slapped me across the face and said there were two ways this could go: I could keep quiet and cooperate, or they would beat me to death and nobody would come to save me.
They grabbed the younger boy who boarded with me, took his phone too, and ordered us both off the bus and into an unfinished building. They slung their arms over our shoulders the whole way, so from a distance we looked like a group of friends.
Once we were inside the building, they set the younger boy on the bare floor and sat me on a chair, then forced me to open my phone. Whenever they needed access to a banking app, they simply held the screen up to my face to trigger the Face ID, and it would open.
I had money spread across four active bank accounts, UBA, OPay, Sterling Bank, and a savings app. They transferred all my funds from the other accounts into my UBA account.
When they opened my WhatsApp, they saw my best friend’s foreign number and called him. They were Igbo, but they intentionally spoke with a Hausa-Fulani accent over the phone because they knew exactly which accent triggers Nigerian insecurity paranoia.
Every time they dialled a contact, three to four of them would beat me, forcing me to cry out and scream for help into the phone. When you are being hit like that, fear completely takes over.
They told my friend they had already killed two people, and that I’d be the next if he didn’t send ₦5 million for my release. They did the same thing to the other boy, beating him as they called his family.
Listening to them role-play ‘commander’ on the phone, I realised these people weren’t insurgents and would most likely not kill me. They were just greedy men trying to make quick money.
They wanted my parents’ number. I lied and said my father wasn’t in my life, scared that if he heard ₦5 million, he’d send it immediately. They called my mother instead. She used to work in a bank, and I’m sure her instincts kicked in. She told my friend to tell them ₦500,000 was all the family had, and they took it.
They made my family transfer the ₦500,000 to my UBA account. Once the money landed, they demanded an extra ₦100,000, claiming it was for my transportation back home.
One of them took my phone, walked to a nearby POS stand, and withdrew all the money. By the time he returned, he had a side bag stuffed with cash. After that, they spent nearly 30 minutes waiting for Apple’s security delay to sign me out of my iCloud account. Once the phone was wiped clean, they walked us back to the junction, handed me about ₦1,000 for bus fare, and let us go. The original bus was long gone.
While all this was happening, my friend back on the mainland was frantically trying to save me. He had gone directly to the police station closest to his house to report the situation. The officers had him sit down and write a statement. And that was essentially where their involvement ended.
They did not attempt to track my phone, monitor the bank transfers, negotiate with the captors, or send a team to search the area. They showed zero interest in taking action. It wasn’t until a mutual acquaintance pulled strings to call a high-ranking person at the station that the officers paid any extra attention—and even then, they didn’t leave the building.
When I finally made it back to my friend’s place late that night, I was in deep shock. I tried to laugh it off at first, but the weight of the trauma hit me hard the next morning when I woke up without my phone, my money, or my sense of safety.
I decided never to return to the police station to follow up. They were useless when my life was on the line, so going back would have been a waste of time and a reopening of fresh wounds.
A week later, sitting alone in my room, I turned on my camera and recorded a video sharing my story on TikTok.
I posted it because my online community was worried after I went silent for days. I posted it to warn others about the exact methods these thieves use, and, most importantly, to highlight the reality of living in Nigeria today: we do not have a government or a police force that protects us. You are entirely on your own.
The responses to my video were mixed. Hundreds of people flooded the comment section with their own dates and stories of being robbed or kidnapped in broad daylight. But others left comments mocking me for crying on camera, telling me I shouldn’t show emotion because I’m “a man.”
That toxic mindset is something I refuse to accept. Going through a life-or-death situation is terrifying, and suppressing trauma only destroys men from the inside. Talking openly about it helped me heal.
Right now, I’ve taken a break from regular content creation to rebuild and restrategise. I’ve moved back to Calabar, and I’m preparing to start my master’s degree at the State University. I’m also planning to launch a podcast, a safe, anonymous space where NYSC corps members can share their workplace struggles without fear.
Nigeria may have failed to protect me that night, but I refuse to let that experience define my future. I am rebuilding my life, one step at a time.
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