Leave us alone, kidnappers warn police boss on phone

• Girlfriend helps police nail suspect

The Officer in Charge of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Ikeja, Lagos, Mr. Abba Kyarri, was shocked to his marrows after his phone recently rang, he picked and heard the voice of a kidnapper he had been trailing, yelling that he should leave him and his gang members alone. The kidnapper had yelled: “Leave us alone! Is the man we kidnapped your father? Is he your family member? What is your own in the matter? Why are you chasing us up and down? Are we armed robbers or is the ransom your money?”

A few hours after receiving the strange call, Kyarri gathered his men and they began restrategising on how to nab the notorious suspect, known as Peter Samuel a.k.a K boy.

Incidentally, Samuel was part of the notorious China kidnappers’ gang, which terrorised Lagos citizens for long in 2013 until their defeat by SARS men. China’s gang was part of the gang that kidnapped Ejigbo Council boss, Kehinde Bamgbetan, a Briton, an Eastern High Court Judge and a Chinese national, amongst others in Lagos. The gang had and still has connections in different parts of Nigeria and its tentacles spread to Benin Republic and Ghana.
After the phone call from Samuel, SARS traced him to Owerri, Imo State, in a hotel. SARS detectives were able to monitor his movements for two weeks through his lover in the state. According to reports, when he sighted the police detectives, he had bolted from the hotel and made a beeline for his car. He had attempted to reverse and speed out of the hotel premises, but his every move was countered by the vigilant police team who were in another car.
Sensing that reversing was as difficult as going forward; Samuel chose the lesser of two evils. In front of him was an entrance, permanently padlocked by the hotel staff. Behind him was SARS men in their car, just waiting for him to make a move. He rammed into the locked gate, crashing it and also succeeded in damaging his car. He was alleged to have stepped out of the car with a smoking gun and attempted to bolt.
Orders to halt from policemen, fell on deaf ears. Worried that he might escape, police were said to have returned fire. A bullet was said to have got him and he died days later from the gunshot wound in a hospital.
After the death of China and other six members of his gang in 2013, it was thought other gang members, who fled, would learn and cease from crime. But not Samuel, reputed to be China’s second in command. When he knew China had fallen, Samuel recruited new members and teamed them with old ones, to form the new gang, terrorising Nigerians. But their reign of terror was as brief as a candle in the wind.
When Samuel was killed, Kyarri’s phone number was discovered among his phone contacts. One locally made gun and five cartridges were recovered from him. The subsequent death of Samuel, led to the arrest of six other suspects.
The suspects have been identified as Ugochukwu Ezeoma, Sunday Oha, Obioma Onuoha, James Emoh, Habeeb Garba and Bernard Okoro. The end of the road began for the gang after the Lagos State Commissioner of Police; Umar Manko received reports that the gang kidnapped a victim returning from work at the Agbara area of Ogun State.
A police source said: “On February, 9, 2014, a man who work with GSK Company was kidnapped at Agbara area. His wife, after a long wait for him to return from work, raised the alarm. She reported to the police that her husband was missing.” While the search for the supposed missing man was on his distraught wife received a call from the gang that she should pay a ransom of N100 million, if she ever wanted to see her husband alive.
Investigators later discovered that the victim was kidnapped and kept in one of the kidnappers’ dens in Ogun State. SARS men, who were already working round the clock to rescue the victim, tracked his car to the Ajegunle area of Lagos. The car was parked in a street. The plate number had been changed. Kyarri ordered his men to keep vigilance on the car, with the hope that any of the gang members might come for the car.
The policemen, who were in mufti, pretended to be residents. After seven hours of waiting and killing time, the men had almost given up when two men strolled to the car and attempted to start it. The police swooped on them.
One of the suspects, who identified himself as Obioma Onuoha, a car dealer, said that Samuel gave him the car. Although he denied being a kidnapper, he admitted to have received stolen vehicles from the gang, which he sells. Onuoha was used as bait to catch the other five members of the gang. Onuoha, who sells cars at Berger, Mile 2, said: “I know the vehicles they brought to me to buy were stolen ones. I have bought five vehicles from them. I was trying to change the plate number on one of the cars when the police arrested me.
“A guy called School boy linked me to the gang. I had bought two End of Discussion cars from them. Later, I bought two Highlander Jeeps and one CRV Jeep from them. It was the last one, a Hyundai car that got me in trouble. “I bought the Highlander Jeep for N600, 000, CRV for N700, 000.
I sold the Highlander for N1.5 million and converted End of Discussion to my own use.” SARS investigators discovered that the gang leader, Samuel, had escaped to Owerri, Imo State after the two men were picked up at Ajegunle. The team trailed him to the state and placed him under surveillance for two weeks.
On the day they finally confronted him at the hotel, he made futile attempts to escape, but died trying. Another police source revealed: “Samuel’s lover was used by the police to monitor his movements until the fateful day he drove his car into the hotel.
As he was driving in, he didn’t know that the jeep behind him was filled with SARS men.” SARS team had to go to the east three times and Cross Rivers State, before they were able to arrest Habeeb, another gang member.
Habeeb said: “We used to operate in Lagos before, but we relocated to Ogun because the heat from SARS men was too much for us.” Meanwhile, two of the arrested suspects had taken SARS to the original camp where the GSK staff (victim) was detained, but he was not there. The suspects believed that Samuel’s second in command and another fleeing member, are with the victim. Narrating the part he played in the kidnap of the GSK staff at Agbara, Ugochukwu said that the kidnap was carried out by four members of the gang and others from the eastern part of the country.
He explained that Samuel and another gang member, presently on the run relocated with the victim on hearing that SARS had started apprehending their members. Ugochukwu, a generator mechanic who later veered into commercial motorcycle operator and plied Mile 2 Expressway, said: “I was arrested in connection with a kidnap case.
I was also involved in the kidnap of a Briton some time ago. The leader of my gang is Sam but we call him K boy. “He asked me to drive them along Oshodi road in his Jeep. It was there we kidnapped the Briton, brought him out of his car. Four of us did the job and we used CRV Jeep to execute the operation.
We took him to a warehouse where we keep victims, along Ago Palace way.” He said that he had gunshot wound which he sustained during encounter with the police. “I went to collect ransom with motorbike and the Police started shooting. The bullet hit me. I treated it at Alaba Rago. The man that treated me was a doctor, but not in a hospital. I paid him just N3, 500. I lied to him that I was shot by a cult group.”
Oha who said that he joined the gang to raise money for his journey to India, added: “We were six in number, on three motorbikes. We used our motorbikes to block the man, Samuel showed him gun and the man cooperated. I drove the car to the warehouse. “We used military camouflage cap during operation to fool the victim that we were military men.” Bernard Okoro, 24, said he was arrested because he was Samuel’s half-brother. Okoro said: “We are of the same father but different mothers. I was arrested in his house while police were looking for him. I’m not part of the gang. I did not know he was into kidnapping business.”