Alexander Ugwu, a kidnap victim, has described how on March 2, he was kidnapped by gunmen while he was on his way back to his camp in Benue State. He also revealed how, once the kidnappers discovered where he was from, they forced him to pay a larger ransom than the others.
According to Alexander Ugwu, 53, in an interview with Vanguard, he boarded a vehicle headed to Ejule from an Army checkpoint located between Aloma and Ejule while traveling from Iheakpu-oka village to Anyigba.
He said that on their way, they encountered heavily armed men who were stopping vehicles, shooting and abducting people. He said that all the six people who were in the car including the driver were kidnapped.
He added that the kidnappers took them into the bush, and from there, they began to call their families for ransom.
He said that he was surprised when the kidnappers told him that he would have to pay 10 million naira as ransom before he would be released. Meanwhile, the money the kidnappers collected from other victims was not even close to that.
He said, “Before my phone went off, the first relation that I could speak to over the phone was my cousin, Elias Ugwu, whose father is my father’s elder brother. I called him and told him the kidnappers were requesting N10 million because, according to them, once an individual is from the Eastern part of the country, he or she must be wealthy.
“I explained to them that I didn’t have money. They countered, saying if I didn’t have money, my relatives had.
“Meanwhile, they collected a ransom of N130,000 from the driver’s family. Also, they collected N200,000 as ransom from the family of a first-year student at Kogi State University, KSU, who is from Ogugu, in Kogi State.”
Ugwu said that he was shocked by the amount of money that the student and driver were asked to pay, and he tried to ask the kidnappers why his case was different.
The kidnappers later reduced the money to N4 million. But tragedy happened when his cousin came to deliver the ransom to secure his release.
(Barrister Elias Ugwu).
His cousin, Elias Ugwu, an Enugu-based lawyer went with his friend to rescue him. They had succeeded in doing so, but their joy was cut short when a team of police officers who were on the trail of bandits that had earlier raided some banks and police stations in Anyigba accosted them and opened fire on their vehicle. The legal practitioner who was driving the car was killed in the process.
