One of such mean-spirited impulses gone amok was a case in Ezinihite Mbaise, Imo State, when in July last year a man who was paid to be a caretaker of an elderly man by his son turned around to mastermind his kidnap.
It was heart-rending listening to Pius Oladele Pius and the monarch of Eziudo, Ezinihite Mbaise, Eze Desmond Ogugua narrate to Saturday Sun the seething and gory tale of how the victim of kidnap was killed and his body dumped in a cesspit. Ginikanwa, who was paid by the family to take care of the person that was abducted, was part of the deal or even initiated it as the suspects later told the police. The mastermind, who now faces trial at the Owerri High Court alongside four others, bears the same surname as the man he allegedly kidnapped and killed with his gang members.
That was not enough harm to the family of the victim as the abductors may have imagined. So, to create a complete chain of pains for the family, the kidnappers blocked their conscience and went as far as squeezing N500,000 from the children of the victim, a month after the victim had died and his body dumped in the pit.
After his death, the five men were not deterred by the turn of events to soft-pedal on their demands for ransom. As they made the calls for payment, they still assured the man’s son that his father was okay and safe in their hands and he should just pay and have him back. After the money was paid, there was no kidnap victim to release. The agony and suspense lingered in his family as the kidnappers kept calling and giving false hope on him and sometimes would refuse to call.
What brought the story tumbling out of the lips of the octogenarian monarch was just an innocuous question on his perception of kidnap in the South East as an Igbo elder and leader.
Eze Ogugua took a deep breath and started: “There are two reasons kidnap has become a scourge among our people. One is political, and the other is economic. The poverty created by the government through neglect in the Niger Delta oil region made them resort to kidnap as means of making themselves heard and weapon of retaliation. Other people learnt the art and it has come to stay in the South East where even robbers have diverted their art to kidnap for better returns. In the beginning, government didn’t take the issue serious until it developed into this bigger problem before all of us started crying. The police have not been equipped to handle the kidnap problem and you know that you can’t climb the iroko tree without a rope. Police can’t chase kidnappers who are more sophisticated in arms out of town with just their bare hands.”
The political cause of kidnap is what the monarch described as the class of citizens the politicians in their desperation to win elections and hush opposition armed to achieve their purpose. “Today, these armed men the politicians gave birth to have turned the arms against unsuspecting persons in the society, including the same politicians. I am sure they must have found out that they sired a clan of hoodlums they can no longer control. The horde of hooligans they created have gone out of control and turned terror on all of us.
“I have a good instance at hand on a kidnap that took place in my community on July 27, 2009. I was overseas for medical attention when the incident occurred. When I came back four months later, not much had been done by the police who literally left the matter unattended to. The victim had not been found, his condition unknown and the kidnappers yet to be identified, yet they lived among us as we later found out. The victim was Pius Onyeremadu. After his kidnap, a report was made at the police station. When I came back, I summoned the community leaders to tackle the abomination. In the course of the interrogation of some people, I suspected two persons who I later handed over to the police for further investigation. The police in Alagbon, Lagos, º were later invited and CID from there interrogated the suspects who confessed to the act and named nine others who were part of it, including the owner of a dangerous hotel in the town.
“It was in that dangerous hotel the victim, Onyeremadu, was kept with a signpost on the rooms where he was barring people from coming closer there.”
The nine persons were later arrested and taken into custody by the police while they continued with investigation during which it was found that the victim died on August 20, 2009, barely a month after he was abducted.
By the time Eze Ogugua returned in November, his community devised several means to track down the kidnappers and possibly release their victim not knowing he had died. One of their strategies was community prayer sessions. They assembled at village squares in all the villages of the communities and prayed that God should apprehend the kidnappers. Ironically, the suspects were part of the prayers. They joined as the prayer train moved from one village to the other. As the prayer leaders voiced their petition to heaven, they all joined to chorus a loud amen. Unknown to them, prayers get answers, and as they unknowingly prayed against themselves to be caught and exposed, so they were later caught.
They told the police that they dumped the body of the victim in Imo River after he burned out, but when they were taken to the river with divers, they recapitulated on the earlier confession and accepted to say the truth on where the body was discarded.
They asked the police to take them back to the community that the man’s body was stuffed inside a soak-away pit in a church premises in Eziudo. As they got there, this time, their tale was right. They pointed at the cesspit that has not been in use for sometime in the premises. The police commenced a dig of the pit. A video recording of the expedition showed four policemen from Alagbon cracking the concrete slab on the pit with pickaxe to make it wide enough for someone to climb in and confirm the testimony. The man’s remains were squeezed into the pit via a little gap and the smaller slab replaced.
As the police gained access into the pit, they beckoned on the villagers to come closer and see the man’s bones littered all over the place. His dress was first picked up from the moist earth and shown to family members who confirmed it was his. Painstakingly, the policemen harvested Onyeremadu’s bones like in Ezekiel’s vision in a yellow polyethene bag. With that they climbed off, displayed the odd specimen before the people before taking them away as exhibit and for forensic analysis after which they would be released to the family.
While this was on, the owner of the hotel who is strongly suspected to be an accomplice in the act escaped and has not been found by the police. But the monarch said there are strong indications that the man is hiding in his wife’s village of birth in Isiala Ngwa of Abia State.
In a bizarre twist, the wife of the man later lodged a complaint with the police that the youths of Eziudo torched the husband’s home and hotel in vengeance. But the complaints of the monarch to the police that the woman should be made to reveal where her husband is hiding have not got a positive response. Since the investigating police came from Alagbon, the suspects were taken to Lagos for proper interrogation and investigation, after which they were brought back to Owerri for trial.
Eze Ogugua said he was the one that handled the cost of everything that has been done so far on behalf of the community, yet, the police are asking the community to defray the forensic analysis of the bones at a cost of N250,000 before that could be handled. “The problem has cost us much money, and it is not yet over”, he lamented.
With the apprehension of the nine kidnap suspects, you would assume peace will now reign in the land of peace (Eziudo). But that is far from the reality. About three weeks ago, another set of bandits struck again and took a hostage. The prey this time is a little girl who the headhunters stole away from the window where she was sleeping at night. The man behind this incident is called Nwachukwu. But that is just a mere name that would best be a misnomer. Nwachukwu means child of God. Task your imagination on how on earth a child of God in the real sense of it would be taking human beings hostage for money. Nwachukwu hails from Umuakam, Eziudo. Unfortunately for him, the eagle eyes of the community security outfit spotted him though in the dark at about 1.00am. They handed him over to the police and returned the little girl to her family. Nwacukwu is still with the police in Owerri. “So far, we can’t account for his whereabouts or what the police is doing with him”, Eze Ogugua said in helplessness.
“We live in terrible times where the reported incidents of kidnap and robbery mount everyday, and I suggest that one of the efficient ways of curbing the menace is that government should empower the traditional rulers. Those traditional rulers who value the peace of their people, and I know most do, should be supported by the government to work in liaison with the police to detect these criminals in the localities. The financial empowerment will enable them to handle what is required to uphold peace through the local vigilante bodies. I know how much I have spent in organizing security groups, summoning meetings of elders and youths and assisting the police in its efforts so far. If a monarch has no money, he can’t handle this and things will get worse. The society can’t effectively tackle kidnap and other dangerous crimes in our midst without the cooperation of the local leaders. Government has never assisted my community in any way in this ugly incident. It has been my people and the police. I would solicit the support of the government for traditional rulers and community leaders in this wise.”
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