I masterminded my kidnap to raise N600,000 for mum’s loans repayment – Teenage girl

A 19-year-old girl, Dorcas Adilewa, has been telling the police in Lagos how she masterminded her own kidnap ostensibly to raise money for her mother’s loan repayment. Adilewa confessed she plotted to fleece her uncle of N600,000 through ransom for her release after the uncle allegedly refused to assist the family to pay her father’s […]

A 19-year-old girl, Dorcas Adilewa, has been telling the police in Lagos how she masterminded her own kidnap ostensibly to raise money for her mother’s loan repayment.

Adilewa confessed she plotted to fleece her uncle of N600,000 through ransom for her release after the uncle allegedly refused to assist the family to pay her father’s medical bill.

She added that beside the bill, she needed money to pay the family’s house rent, which she said was long overdue.

To raise the money, the suspect said she sought the assistance of a friend, 20-year-old Ifeoluwa Ogunbanjo in Ogun State, to call her (Adilewa’s) father requesting for the ransom, an accusation Ogunbanjo denied.

The suspect said, “I went to Ifeoluwa’s place. The situation in my family led me into plotting my own kidnap. My father has a liver problem and my mum had collected a loan from a cooperative society, which she has been finding it difficult to repay.

“My aunty who had always come to the rescue of my family had died recently. She was the person seeing me through school. I had called my uncle to seek for financial help but he turned me down. This was why I devised the strategy to pretend I had been kidnapped to help raise money to help my mother repay her loan.

“I had called my friend that I was coming. The plan was to stay at her place, call my father that I was kidnapped and request for N600,000 as ransom to help mum repay her loan. I knew if my uncle heard I was kidnapped, he would definitely raise the money for the ransom.  But unfortunately, I was arrested.”

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, said the suspect’s father, Adilewa Taiwo, who resides in Ketu area of Lagos had reported at the Ketu police station that on July 12, 2018 at about 3pm, his daughter had called to inform him of her kidnap.

Edgal said, “Her father was at Odogbolu, Ogun State, attending a burial rite when he received a call from a phone number telling him that, his daughter, Dorcas, was being held hostage by kidnappers and that if he did not want her killed, he should pay a ransom of N600,000 to secure her release.

“Investigation into the case was immediately commenced and the phone number that was used by the suspects was geo-located to the Ijebu-Igbo area of Ogun State. While the search was ongoing at Ijebu-Igbo, the location of the supposed kidnappers changed to Ikotun in Lagos and the search party had to move from Ijebu-Igbo to Ikotun in Lagos to rescue the supposed victim.”

Ogunbanjo, however, denied any involvement in the crime. “Dorcas called me on Thursday, July 12 to say she was at my bus stop at Ijebu-Igbo. I asked why she didn’t call me before coming and she replied she was kidnapped and taken to Akure and that she had escaped and decided to come to my place to recuperate.

“When my mother heard her story, she insisted Dorcas pass the night and continue her journey the next day.  That night, Dorcas requested for my phone which I gave her to make a call. She went outside to make the call and by the time she returned the phone, she had deleted all her dialled calls.

“I didn’t know she had called her father telling him she was kidnapped and the kidnappers were demanding for ransom. I have known her for only six months through the church and didn’t know she was capable of such an act. She just implicated me,” she said.