Kidnapping: Stop Discussing Your Private Issues In Public, Police Warn Imo Residents

Source: huhuonline.com

Huhuonline.com understands that the activities of kidnappers in Imo state have increased, despite the Operation Rescue which was launched with fun-fare by Governor Rochas Okorocha recently. To this end, the police in the state is already warning residents to abstain from telling friends how rich their family members are.   Governor Okorocha launched the programme and donated vehicles to the special squad for its operation, which he claimed was aimed at combating crime in the state. But few weeks after, the Imo State Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Lady Chioma Ogoke, was abducted in Owerri.  

Though she has been released, she spent some days with her abductors while the state government has kept mum on whether any ransom was paid. She was dropped by the kidnappers around Nwaorieubi, Mbaitoli Local Council Area of the state and from there she picked a cab which took her to her residence.  

The Police in the state is now calling on all residents if the state including students of higher institutions to be careful with the way they dress and discuss how wealthy their relations are. The police also advised that they should desist from telling people about their relations abroad after it became clear that a resident of the state, Ekezie Ezinne Promise of Njaba Local Government Area of the state, was kidnapped just for the fact that her siblings are abroad.   Promise, who was kidnapped on her way home mid-September along Umunna Road, Orlu , was released after his family members raised a whooping N10 million ransom.

  She said the vehicle in which she was driving home was double-crossed and she was bundled into a waiting car used by the abductors, blindfolded and driven away into the bush while the kidnappers shot sporadically to scare possible rescuers away.   She later realised that she was abducted because her siblings live abroad and are believed to be wealthy when the kidnappers demanded N100 million to get her released.  

Meanwhile, even as the abduction of the Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Lady Chioma Ogoke is now causing doubts on the effectiveness of the task force in the state, the Imo state Police commissioner has said that the Operation Rescue would begin to do its best while advising that people should abstain from flamboyant lifestyles and discussion of the private issues.