A 40-year-old woman, Mrs Joy Emmanuel, has been arrested by the Akwa Ibom State police command police for allegedly conspiring with others to kidnap her husband for perennially starving her of sex and house-keeping money.
Mrs Emmanuel was said to have worked with her accomplices to demand N10m as ransom but later reduced it to N2m which was paid before the police arrested them at the point of sharing the loot.
The suspect, who was paraded alongside 29 others for various offences such as kidnapping, robbery and child theft, by the state commissioner of police, Olatoye Durosinmi, at the command headquarters in Uyo, said she had been subjected to doing all sorts of menial jobs to fend for herself and the children since her husband got married to another woman.
She added that when one of her children finished secondary education, there was no money to send him for further studies.
“I had arranged for my husband’s kidnapping because, for a long time, he had abandoned me with his children. Even when my father and mother-in-law were alive he abandoned me. He never cared for his children. I engaged in menial jobs such as weeding on people’s farms to feed their children and pay their school fees.
“One of the children finished from secondary school and I approached my husband to plan how to send the son to learn trade since the father refused to send him to university, but my husband shunned me.
“The major reason I arranged for his kidnap is that my husband refused to have sex with me and does not take care of me and the children.”
She disclosed that she never collected her share of the money before the police arrested them
“The kidnappers who collected the ransom of N2 million never gave me my share, and I don’t even see the money. It was when the kidnappers were sharing the N2m that the police arrested them and they mentioned me. They never gave me any part of the ransom collected from my husband,” she explained.
Continuing, Mrs Sunday said; “The leader of the kidnapping gang identified as Udo Moji (now at large) assured me that he would collect the money from my husband for me since my husband attacked me and poured away soup in the pot.
“So, I agreed with him, and he kidnapped my husband. I ran around to gather money to pay the kidnappers. The main suspect, Udo Moji ran away.”
Narrating his ordeal, the husband of the suspect, Emmanuel Ebong, who hailed from Ntak Obio Akpa in Oruk Anam local government area, Akwa Ibom State, said, “I was kidnapped on July 21, 2022, in my compound. I came back from treatment because I was weak. Around 8.30pm, I saw about six people in my compound. They struggled with me and released two gunshots into the air, and I struggled with them before they took me out of my compound in a minibus and drove away.
“They kept me from that Thursday till Sunday and demanded N10m from me and later reduced it to N2m before the police came that day. If not for God, they would have killed me.
“They took me to Etinan where they caged me. I thank the Nigeria Police for the rescue operations. I also thank my village head. I don’t know the reason they kidnapped me, they collected N2m from me. The police later recovered over N500,000 from them.”
Meanwhile, the commissioner of police, Olatoye Durosinmi while parading the suspects vowed that his command would not leave any stone unturned to ensure that residents of the state sleep with their eyes close.
