Police arrest six suspected kidnappers of Emefiele’s wife

The police have arrested six suspected members of the gang that abducted the wife of the Central Bank Governor, Margaret Emefiele, last Thursday.


The suspects, who were arrested at their hideout in Edo State over the weekend, are being held at the state command headquarters, Benin.

Sources informed our correspondent on Monday that the suspects were apprehended by the operatives of the Inspector-General of Police Special Monitoring and Intelligence Team, led by CSP Abba Kyari.


This brings to seven the number of suspects arrested in connection with Mrs.Emefiele’s abduction, which occurred along the Benin-Agbor Road.

Our correspondent had reported that Kyari and his team were on the trail of the gang members.

The team had relocated to Edo State after the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, directed them to go for the criminals and rescue their victims, which included a driver and three women.

The gang had demanded N100m ransom, but they were forced to release their victims following pressures from the police, army and Department of State Services.

It could not be confirmed if any ransom was paid, but the hostages were released early Saturday morning, while the security agencies arrested one suspect shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Interpol on Monday in Abuja, organised a cyber-crime training workshop on  Email investigation, open source, online profiling and deep web investigation, for police officers from Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Botswana.

The acting Head of Training Unit, Digital Investigative Support, Cyber-crime Directorate, Interpol, Wei Tee, stated that the workshop was meant to make the web safe for business and living.

He described cyber-crime as a trans-atlantic crime, noting that the Interpol was working with local law enforcement agencies to combat the menace.

Tee said, “Interpol has achieved real success working with the police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.We have to be ahead of the criminals to make the web safe for business and living.”

The IG, Idris, in his welcome address, said due to the international nature of most cyber-crime offences, his administration had set up and deployed a dedicated high-tech and cyber-crime unit within the Interpol National Central Bureau in Nigeria.

He added that there were efforts to equip the unit with the tools and techniques to boost its capacities in fields such as Internet Protocol crime inquiries, identity fraud, online tracking of suspects, electronic crime scene investigation and the forensic examination of computers, computer networks and mobile devices.

The IG, who was represented by the Deputy Inspector-General, Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department, Hyacinth Dagala, explained that in future, experienced members of the unit would be deployed in state police commands to pioneer the diffusion of policing capacity.