It was a horrible day for the staff and management of a feed mill farm located in Oke Old site in Sabo-gida Ora, in Owan West local government area of Edo State as four armed kidnappers stormed the farm killing the trainee manager, Elisha Udejei, a graduate of the University of Ibadan and abducted two female deaf and dumb workers on the farm.
The abduction occurred on April 2, 2024 as workers of the farm were about to close for the day’s work when all of a sudden, they heard loud gunshots by the armed kidnappers.
One of the workers simply identified as Emmanuel was said to have abandoned his motorcycle and fled into the bush as they made away with the female workers.
The two female kidnap victims were however freed after they paid a ransom of N5.5 million.
The owner of the farm, Mr Moses Ihonde who said the abductors looked like Fulanis narrated how his workers were kidnapped, adding that attempts to get the police to respond to the situation yielded no result.
“They were taken into the bush and they used their phones to call the parents for ransom. They demanded N20 million; the parents said they have never had N1 million in their account and pleaded with the kidnappers to reduce the amount and in anger, they ended the call.
“The following day, they called again and demanded N10 million and the negotiation continued. The parent pleaded that they could give them N100,000 and progressively the victim’s parents increased it to N200,000.
“At this point, I had to call the chief security officer in Government House Benin who gave me the number of someone to contact but the kidnappers became restive that if the money was not paid, they would kill the victims.
“The parents of the victims were able to raise the sum to N 2.5 million and were told by the kidnappers that their sponsors asked them to pay N5.5 million with a deadline of 2pm. They directed the parents to go and drop the ransom at a bush in Afuze which they complied with before they were eventually released on Monday April 8, 2024.”
The Edo State Police Public Relations Officer, Chidi Nwabuzor, could not confirm the report as he could not take calls placed to his phone as at the time of filing this report.
