A lady has revealed how someone she had helped establish a transportation business by giving him three different tricycles had decided to hire kidnappers to kidnap and eliminate her.
Reporting the incidents that transpired at the Force Investigation Bureau- Intelligence Response Team, FIB-IRT, Ragachigun base in Kaduna. Binta said she and Haliru the tricycle rider were relations whom she had bought the tricycles for on a hire purchase scheme which led to the debt of 1.4m naira, hence resulting in the attempt to take her life.
There had been a tough clash between armed gangs in a forest in Galadimawa Town, Binta had revealed the gun exchange battle between the groups were because of her as she was at first kidnapped by some group and whisked away into the forest and along the process had found a way to escape. In doing so she had fallen into the hands of another gang who also took her captive.
Along the way the new captors and the former met in the forest and in the bid to retain her for themselves they started exchanging fire.
Crime Guard gathered that operatives of the FIB-IRT on Operation Puff Adder with the aid of Tactical Intelligence Unit, TIU swung into action and arrested one Abubakar Haliru, a native of Magume, Zaria, Kaduna.
The suspect revealed that he conspired with Nuhu Ibrahim and Rashidu Muntari, both from Tundungaudi, Zaria, to kidnap her, collect ransom from her, and then murder her.
In an interview with the suspect, who was paraded at the FIB-IRT office in Abuja by the Force Public Relations Officer, CP Frank Mba, he revealed how he duped his cousin into accompanying him to his friend’s house to collect money owed him.
He also described how, at around 5 p.m. on August 15, 2021, he drove his cousin in her Honda Accord 2008 Model car into the hands of the kidnappers.
“I am a tricycle operator. She bought some tricycles and gave them to me on hire purchase at the rate of N3.9 million.
“I ought to have finished payment by December 2020 but I have only paid her N2.5 million with an outstanding balance of N1.4 million.
“When she called to ask for the balance, I told her I was going to collect some money from a friend who was also owing me.
“I deceived her to accompany me to collect the money from the person with a promise to pay her balance but I took her to the bandits in Galadimawa. I met members of the kidnap gang at the farm where I was working at the Kubu area.
“I knew they were kidnappers, they were a five-man gang. Immediately we arrived at the spot where they would strike, they came out of the bush, kidnapped both of us and marched us into the bush, while I abandoned the car at the junction.
“I asked them to take the car to the expressway in order to make people conclude we were kidnapped. But they left it at the junction saying it would be easy to locate where it was.
“The arrangement was that after collecting ransom for her release, I would be given my own share. I asked them to collect N100 million as ransom because my cousin is a business woman, she has a provision store.”
He said, “my plan was that they should kill her so that I would not pay the money I owed her’.
“While in the camp, my cousin managed to escape because she was not bound. A stranger came to carry me where I was kept and took me to another camp.
“That was when it dawned on me that I had been genuinely kidnapped. My cousin also fell into the hand of another gang and I do not know how much she paid because I don’t know members of the new gang.
“It was the members of the gang who instructed me to call someone to come and pay for my release.
“Inside the bush they have about 50 different kidnap gangs with different camps. They have different huts where they keep kidnapped persons.
“I managed to escape from the second hut on the day the ransom was to be paid for my release. On that day, my abductors had gone out.
“As I was escaping, I begged a farmer I met on a farmland to give me his phone to contact my people that was after I explained to him that I was kidnapped.
“I told my people on the phone not to bother to pay ransom to anybody. I asked them to come and meet me at Iredachi junction.
“When my brothers came, they handed me over to IRT operatives. I regret my action”, he said.
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