Three notorious kidnappers have been arrested by the police.
The suspects, Pius Uba Livinus, 25; Kelechukwu Onyema, 27; and Ayebe Segun, 32, were arrested by officers attached to the Lagos State Anti-robbery Squad on September 3, 2012 after they kidnapped one Yahaya Aminu, a staff of Dangote Group of Companies.
Aminu was allegedly trailed by the kidnappers from the Dangote Head Office at Falomo, Ikoyi, as he went to the Guaranty Trust Bank on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi to withdraw money.
Narrating how the suspected kidnappers were arrested, Ngozi Braide, the Lagos State Police Command spokesperson, said police officers got a distress call and arrested the robbers at Ajao Estate, also in Lagos.
Braide said: “The victim was rescued alive while two locally made pistols with 16 rounds of cartridges and one KIA Cerato saloon car with registration number DN 735 APP belonging to the victim were recovered from the kidnappers.”
Braide, however, expressed worry over the release of one of the kidnappers, Livinus, by the court.
Livinus had before now been arrested and charged to court for kidnapping.
Braide stated that Livinus and other members of his gang on February 17, 2012 at the Oniru Estate in Lagos, kidnapped one Debasis Mitraroy of Dangote Group.
“The suspect (Livinus) was eventually charged to Court 17, PWD Ikeja, presided over by Magistrate A.O. Akande for conspiracy and kidnapping via charge number MIK/R/42/2012 but was strangely released in June 2012 by the court from where he immediately went back to his kidnapping business,” Braide said.
The police also stated that Livinus in March 2011 allegedly led a gang of four that kidnapped an Indian from a night club on Victoria Island where they collected a ransom of $200,000 (about N32million) and fled to Ghana before coming back to Nigeria in 2012 to coordinate other kidnapping incidents.
One of Livinus’ gang members, William Bassey, was arrested during that kidnapping incident and paraded.
Livinus confessed to the crime, stating that his bad friends led him to crime.
“Anytime I want to quit, my friends will threaten me that if I don’t go out with them they will kill my family members. So that was why I kept going back to kidnapping,” Livinus said.