Kidnappers on rampage in Bayelsa, abduct child, free ex-commissioner

Marie Ebikake, former Commissioner for Transport in Bayelsa, who was abducted along with a soldier in separate incidents by gunmen last Sunday, has regained his freedom. While the whereabouts of the soldier is still unknown, Ebikake was released at about 3 am yesterday.

Ebikake’s freedom came just hours after two female kidnappers abducted a three years old child whose mother sells orange at Azikoro junction of Ekeki community in Yenagoa. The incident happened between 9-10pm on Thursday and the whereabouts of the child is still unknown as at the time of this report.

A fellow trader, who also trades at the junction, said the mother of the child was with the girl and her siblings when the two kidnappers came asking where they could buy skirt. She said the woman pointed out to them where they could buy the skirt but one of the abductors convinced her that she couldn’t recognize the store she was referring to.

She said, “One of the kidnappers pleaded with her to follow her while the other kidnapper stay with the children. She followed this strange woman just to help her and come back to her children and business without knowing it was a plan to carry out their evil plot. When they got to the cloth shop, the strange woman did not buy any skirt while the mother of the child left her at the shop and came back to the junction.

Getting to her spot, she didn’t see her little child and the other woman that stayed back to wait for her friend and when she asked her other children, they told her that somebody crossed the road with their sister.

She looked around the whole vicinity, there was no trace of them and by the time she went back to the cloth shop to look for the other woman, she was nowhere to be found either.”