Edo State security operatives say they have arrested two suspects linked to the robbery of a hair salon in Benin City, following a break-in that was captured on CCTV. According to the shop owner, the incident took place at a hair business on Tony Anenih Road, off Ebenezer School Road, Ihama, GRA, Benin City, on Saturday, August 22, 2026.
We were not able to independently confirm the arrest through other news outlets as of this report; it is reported here based on the security update shared alongside the incident.
How the robbery happened
The shop owner said the suspects first visited the salon a day before the robbery, pretending to make enquiries about getting a customer’s hair styled. She said they returned the next day, sat in the waiting area as if waiting for someone to pay for a braiding session, and were later joined by another man, allegedly carrying a gun, before carrying out the robbery. The suspects made away with luxury wigs reportedly worth millions of naira.
Not the first time luxury hair has been targeted
This is part of a wider, growing pattern of hair-related theft in Nigeria:
In Lagos, police arrested a suspected robbery syndicate member found with a large sack of assorted human hair worth about ₦20 million at a car park, showing that hair theft in Nigeria can involve organised gangs, not just opportunistic thieves.
Hair theft is not unique to Nigeria; it has been documented for centuries in various parts of the world wherever human hair carries high resale value for wigs and hairpieces.
Salons more broadly have become targets for violent crime in Nigeria, including a case earlier this year where gunmen shot and killed a barber inside his Lagos shop.
Why hair has become worth stealing, and who it hurts
Human hair extensions and wigs, especially high-grade “luxury” ones, can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of naira per unit, making a single haul from a salon extremely valuable and easy to resell quietly, unlike, say, electronics with serial numbers. Salon owners are often small business owners, frequently women, who carry large amounts of stock without heavy security, which makes them easier targets than banks or big retail stores.
The effects fall hardest on the salon owners themselves, many of whom lose their entire working capital in one robbery, since hair inventory is usually bought upfront and in bulk. Beyond individual shops, a wave of such robberies can push honest hair vendors to raise prices to cover losses and insurance-like costs, or to abandon storefronts altogether in favour of appointment-only, address-hidden operations, which then makes the business harder to regulate and safer for criminal buyers of stolen goods to exploit. At a national level, incidents like this add to the broader picture of insecurity around small businesses that keeps some entrepreneurs from investing further in physical shops.
What could help protect salon owners
A few measures salon and shop owners are increasingly turning to include:
Installing visible CCTV systems, which in this case is what allowed the incident to be captured and the suspects identified at all.
Verifying the identity of first-time customers who visit to “make enquiries” before large transactions, especially for high-value stock.
Building relationships with local vigilante and police contacts, so reports can be acted on quickly, since this case shows it was public sharing of the CCTV footage that pushed forward identification and arrest.
Reducing the amount of expensive stock kept visibly on-site at any one time.
Small businesses deserve the same protection as big ones
We think this case is a reminder that in Nigeria’s crime conversation, small, women-run businesses like hair salons rarely get the same attention as bank robberies or high-profile kidnappings, even though the financial damage to the owner can be just as devastating. We believe security agencies should treat organised theft targeting small businesses, hair vendors included, with the same seriousness as any other armed robbery, and we hope this arrest, if confirmed, leads to a full prosecution rather than a quiet release.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
