A 32-year-old former banker, Edet Ekuno, and three undergraduates of the Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic, Hope Okon, Sunday Samiga and Isaiah Unagbon, have been arrested by the Lagos State Police Command for allegedly being part of an armed robbery and kidnapping gang that has been terrorising resident of Lagos and Akwa Ibom States.
Ekuno who lives in Ajah, according to the police, was the leader of the gang which he formed after he was laid off by a new generation bank after he was involved in some shady deals, while Okon said he is an ND2 Computer Engineering student.
The gang was busted at the D2 Hotel in the Ojodu-Berger area, where they were reportedly perfecting plans to kidnap a businessman in Magodo Estate on March 7, 2015.
Two locally-made pistols and 18 live cartridges were said to have been recovered from the gang.
The former banker confessed to the police that he joined the gang in 2012 to kidnap one of his neighbours working with Chevron.
Hear him:
"I was laid off by the bank I used to work for. I am also an estate agent and the music minister in a church.
I don’t just know what came over me. The 2012 operation involved a neighbour, but it was not successful. The man shouted for help and we fled with his money and phones.
We were five in that operation. I was given N20,000 from the proceeds. The Magodo operation was my second attempt."
27-year-old Okon said he made N800,000 from one of his operations after collecting N5 million ransom from the family of a woman they kidnapped, adding that he had been in Lagos for about two weeks monitoring their target’s movements.
"In 2010, in Akwa Ibom, we kidnapped a woman whose daughter is a medical doctor. We released her after her family paid N5m.
My share was N800,000. I used it to keep poultry, but it later collapsed due to poor management.
I was about to go back to Akwa Ibom having exhausted the N50,000 on me when we were arrested."
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