A 23-year-old boy identified as Edward Okache, who arranged his abduction, has been nabbed by police in Ogun State.
The police, on Monday, said they arrested Okache along with four others identified as Asamoah Ernest, Isiah Uti, Ephraim Anyijor, and charity Lukpata, who connived in executing his kidnap.
Earlier, a man identified as Comfort Okache reported at the Mowe divisional headquarters via a phone call that his younger brother, who was travelling from Calabar to Lagos, had been kidnapped around the Mowe area of the state.
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The police spokesman in Ogun, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said the kidnappers thereafter demanded ten million naira as a ransome fee.
The DPO of the Mowe division, SP Folake Afeniforo, hence mobilised the division’s tactical teams to the area.
Oyeyemi said:
“Upon painstaking and enduring combing of the surrounding bush at Orimerunmu area, the victim was sighted in an uncompleted building with the duo of Asamoah Ernest, a Ghanaian, and Isiah Uti, where he was tied in both hands and legs.
“But on getting to the station, the two arrested suspects made a shocking revelation that the so-called victim was the person who planned with them to kidnap him in order for him to extort money from his parents to invest in an online business.”
They had confessed further that the said Okache was introduced to them by Anyijor and Lukpata, who are also indigenes of the same Yala Local Government Area of Cross River as the victim, and admitted It was a collective plan.
Their confession, Oyeyemi stated, led to the arrest of Anyijor and Lukpata, adding that “they have all confessed to the commission of the crime.”
Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police in Ogun, Lanre Bankole, has ordered that the case be forwarded to the anti-kidnapping unit of the State CIID for more investigation and possible prosecution.
