Lagos school kidnap day 28: Abductors refuse to speak with us after N10m ransom – parents

Tension heightened yesterday, in the homes of parents of the six abducted Senior Secondary School students of the Lagos State Model College, Igbonla, Epe, following the abductors’ refusal to communicate with them.


While some claimed not to have heard from the abductors for one week, others said they had not been in touch with them for three days, describing the emotional trauma they are presently undergoing as better imagined than experienced.

It was gathered that some of the parents who are self employed have not been able to attend to their businesses since the abduction of their children on May 24. One of them who spoke with newsmen yesterday, wondered why the kidnappers stopped communicating with them after collecting N10 million which they pooled together. According to the parent; “ The last time I personally heard from them was last week. It was one of us (parents) that they told that they were training our children on how to use arms on Saturday.

Why have they stopped speaking to us after collecting money from us? As it is now, we don’t know if all is well with our children. “When the money was gathered, they instructed that only two people should come with it. But they later reduced the number to one because they weren’t sure if the second person could be a security agent. ”The person that took the money down was delayed for five hours before he was eventually asked to drop it at Epe.

He then reported that there was nobody around except a fisher man who was far away, at the time he dropped the money where he was instructed to. Thereafter, he was instructed on phone to leave the place and warned never to look back. Nobody came to receive the money from him physically as expected. “ We are traumatized. We wake up each day with the hope of receiving news of their arrival , only to retire in a more devastating way than we woke up. Yes, the Police have assured us that they would be rescued , so has the state government.

But my question is when?” At this juncture, the line went dead. Effort to reach him again failed. But the Assistant Inspector -General of Police in-charge of zone 2, Onikan, who oversees the Lagos and Ogun states Police commands , Adamu Ibrahim, had assured parents of the abducted students in particular and Lagosians in general, that the students would be released sooner than expected. Ibrahim said that security measures had been put in place to fast track their rescue but was mum on the modalities to actualise it.