Wife stages own kidnap to extort N15m from husband

“Words cannot express how I felt when I got to know that my wife staged her own kidnap in order to extort a whooping N15 million from me”. These were the words of a Lagos-based businessman, Alhaji Kabir Muraino, whose wife, Hadijat, staged her own kidnap.

The suspect Hadijat, had allegedly contracted the services of five persons, including an herbalist, to help carry out her plans. She had allegedly told her accomplice that they should tell her husband of 27 years that kidnappers had abducted her and her sick daughter.

Kabir told newsmen yesterday at the police command headquarters, Ikeja, where his wife is being detained, that those his wife contracted to collect the said sum allegedly threatened to kill her if the money was not paid.

He said: “The kidnappers were demanding N15 million from me before they will release my wife and daughter. They threatened me on phone that they will kill the two of them. I was afraid and never knew what to do. I pleaded with them because I don’t know what they will do next. I told them that I don’t have such an amount but they insisted. From the background I could hear my wife crying and pleading with them. I never knew it was fake.

“I told them that I will pay N500,000 but they refused. They reduced the money to N5 million. The negotiation continued and they later reduced the ransom to N4 million. It was then I decided to inform the police. I was shocked when I later got to know that it is my wife who staged the whole thing.”

Kabir said what surprised him was that he had earlier this year gave N300,000 to his wife to enable her go into business. He said in the same vein, one of his sons also gave her the sum of N150,000, totaling N450,000. “I wonder what she needed N15 million for. She did not invest the money I gave her in any business.”

In a swift reaction, Hadijat said she and her children had been abandoned by her husband. The suspect said besides, she also needed some money for her sick daughter’s medical bill. “My daughter is 18 years old and she has been sick since she was born. She has been convulsive since birth. He kept building houses everywhere and keeping the proceeds to himself. I don’t know what to do that was why I cooked up the plan of faking my own kidnap,” she confessed.

She explained that she went to stay with one of her friends in Ogun State, stressing that it was her friend’s husband and his elder brother who called her husband to request for N1 million and not N15 million as alleged.

Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, who paraded the suspects before newsmen yesterday said on August 2, at about 3:30p.m. Alhaji Kabir Muraino, aged 55, of Governor’s Road, Ikotun, reported at Ikotun Police Station that his wife named, Hadijat Kabir, aged 45, and his daughter Hamidat Kemi, 18, who is of unsound mind, were kidnapped same date on their way to Psychiatric Hospital, Oshodi, Lagos.

Edgal said based on the complaint, he directed the Anti-Kidnapping Squad to ensure speedy rescue of the hostages and arrest of the suspects. He said that investigation revealed the kidnappers were making their demands from a community in Ogun State, called Ado-Odo.

“Operatives of the squad mobilized to the area and busted the camp of the kidnappers. The hostages were rescued and the suspects were arrested, while the rest fled the scene.

“When one of the hostages, Hadijat Kabir, was being debriefed, she confessed that she planned her kidnap with the suspects arrested to defraud her husband. She named the following persons who are on the run to be part of the kidnap syndicate: Wasiu Rufai a.k.a Ojulyawodon (her native doctor), Luqmon Ahmed and Jossy (surname unknown).”