Recruited kidnapper foils kidnap of two-year-old

A suspected kidnapper has told operatives of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), Ikeja,Lagos State Police Command, that he planned a two-year-old boy because he needed money for his mother’s hospital bill.

The suspect, Suleiman Seidu, 33, was arrested over the weekend, after the man he recruited to assist him carry out the kidnap of the boy, Master. Chimdi Udwu, in Owode area of Ogun State, alerted RRS.
Investigators said that Seidu had successfully kidnapped two persons in Kogi State and collected huge ransom.
According to Seidu, he wanted to kidnap Chimdi because his biological mother is seriously ill. He said that he desperately needed money to pay her hospital bill.
He said: “I have been on the trail of that boy and his parents for quite a while now. I conceived the idea to kidnap him after I was left with no option. My mother is very ill at the moment. I wanted to demand for N10 million ransom, but if his parents cannot afford the whole, at least I was expecting N3million at the end of the day.
I just relocated to that area. I thought of contracting someone who knew the environment very well and would make the job easy for me.”
It was in that process he recruited a local accomplice, who would later spill the beans to the RRS.
Seidu further said: “I have been watching the movements of his parents for about two weeks. I discovered that whenever the driver was taking the boy to school, he would alight from the car to lock the gate because they don’t have a gate keeper in their house. The driver also takes him to school between 7:00 am and 8:00 a.m. What I devised was to kidnap the boy whenever the driver alights from the car to close the gate, escape on a waiting motorbike. Although, I live in a room and parlour apartment, I planned to keep him with me in my house to be demanding and threatening his parent to bring my expected ransom.”
The father of the boy, Udwu, who had no inkling of the looming woe, thanked RRS operatives for carrying out careful intelligence gathering and successfully foiling the kidnap.
A police source said: “Upon gathering further intelligence, a member of the RRS Decoy Team posed as a lady that the kidnapper sought to help give the child a good care. For more than two weeks, while the kidnapping took shape, the investigator, pretending as an accomplice, exchanged information with Seidu.”
Police said that Seidu assured the accomplice that he has gotten motorcycle to use in kidnapping the boy. Seidu also noted that the ransom was N10 million. He was sure the victim’s father could part with some money because he’s a landlord and deals in electrical appliances.
New Telegraph gathered that when the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Fatai Owoseni was informed of the jurisdictional challenge of arresting Seidu in Ogun State, he ordered the decoy team to proceed, assuring them he would contact his colleague in Ogun. Owoseni stressed that there was no jurisdiction in crime.
The accomplice, who sold out Seidu, said:  “I knew it was going to boomerang if I concealed the information and not inform the police. I called one of my friends who resides in Lagos and explained the whole plan to him. My friend advised me to report the case to RRS.”