Man kidnaps his landlady to offset rent

• Police avert another ‘Cynthia Osokogu’ tragedy
The police yesterday paraded one Ifeanyi Ezechukwu and Chinedu Amadi over the alleged kidnapping of Ezechukwu’s landlady and her son to obtain ransom and pay his overdue rent.

They were paraded alongside six other suspects arrested by operatives of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Monitoring Unit for various crimes, which include armed robbery and kidnapping.

The spokesman of the Nigerian Police Force, CSP Jimoh Moshood, said Ezechukwu and Amadi were arrested in a raid carried out in Umuanwa community, Ikwerre Local Council of Rivers State. He explained that they were picked over kidnapping of Ezechukwu’s landlady and her son, who were rescued by the police.

Fielding questions from journalists, Ezechukwu admitted conspiring with his friends to kidnap his landlady to enable him to pay his rent of N70,000. The police said they were arrested after a ransom of N150,000 was paid.

“We collected N150,000 as ransom before we freed them. We kept her for four days with her son and they were fed with garri,” Amadi, who was with the victims to make sure they would not escape, said.

The police also paraded two other suspects over the kidnapping of a student of the Federal University of Technology Owerri, Imo State. Moshood said the suspects, Michael Obi and Kelechi Ndukwu, were arrested and the victim rescued from their hideout, after they lured her through an Internet homosexual love scam.

Responding to questions, Obi told newsmen that they pretended to be lesbians on the Internet to lure unsuspecting lesbians interested in a relationship to meet them. He said they threatened their victims that they would expose them to their families before calling their parents for ransom.

Obi and Ndukwu had established a Facebook contact with the female undergraduate, sweet talked her into coming to Rivers, where they kept her and called the parents to demand a N2 million ransom.

Obi said he pretended to be a lesbian and asked her to come over to Port Harcourt for a good time.

“She arrived and we blackmailed her by telling her we would inform her parents she is a lesbian. She didn’t want this and she complied to our other option. We were in the course of negotiating for the N1.8 million ransom when we were arrested.”