On March 18, 2023, Saturday Vanguard published a story of a businessman, Timothy Uche, who was abducted by a four–man armed gang, one of whom disguised as a pregnant woman, in the Ejigbo area of Lagos.
After three days in captivity, his abductors settled for N15 million ransom, as against the N75 million initially demanded.
When it became apparent that Uche’s family could not raise N15 million, Crime Guard reliably gathered that his abductors collected N5 million from his family. But they made him take an oath to pay back the N10 million balance upon his release.
In a brazen arrogance, while dropping Uche off at Ayobo on Tuesday, March 14, 2023, the kidnappers informed him that they would come back for the balance, threatening to wipe out his entire family if he made any attempt to outsmart them.
Barely had Uche finished nursing the bruises inflicted on him while in the kidnapper’s den, when his wife received a call from the kidnappers, demanding the N10 million balance.
They gave him May 6, 2023, as the deadline to pay, with an instruction that the money must be paid in cash and must be in United States dollars.
The collection point was Ikotun, a Lagos suburb. Three of them came in a motorcycle and succeeded in collecting the dollars that were starched in a bag, from the businessman’s wife.
Then all of a sudden, a car from nowhere hit their operational motorcycle, and they zoomed off, flinging all of them to the ground.
The bag containing the dollar notes was also flung open, revealing some wades of dollars.They were subsequently arrested by armed policemen from the State Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department, SCIID, Yaba.
Among the suspects surprisingly, Crime Guard reliably gathered that during the preliminary investigation, one of the arrested suspects was discovered to be a serving security agent. The gang’s two operational AK-47 rifles were also recovered by the detectives.
During interrogation, the suspects whose identities were not revealed by the Police, mentioned a popular Lagosian as the leader of the gang. However, when detectives stormed the alleged leader’s house and guest houses on the mainland and Island, he was nowhere to be found. (Vanguard)