FCT: Kidnappers kill Dei-Dei trader, free 22 captives at N1m each

By Onyekachi Abba

Suspected kidnappers were recently alleged to have killed one Dei-Dei trader, Mrs Nkechi Christian and freed 22 kidnapped victims at the sum of N1million each.
The victims said majority of the captives were Igbo traders with few other Igbo and non-Igbo, adding that some of the suspects wore army uniforms, while others wore Fulani herders attires and spoke Fulani language and used Hausa language within themselves (those in herders attire and those in army uniform).
They informed them before they were being matched to unknown place through bush, they met some people in the uniform of officers and men of Nigerian Police at a checkpoint, but still they (the captives) couldn’t be helped.
The ugly incident was disclosed to journalists in the market by the Chairman of GSM Dealers Association (GDA), Sunday Okechukwu and one of the victims, a plumbing materials dealer in Abuja International Building Materials Market (IBMM) also in Dei-Dei, who wouldn’t like his name mentioned.
According to them, the deceased, a handset dealer in the said GSM market in Dei-Dei, Abuja boarded a bus from Kogi to Abuja.
They informed that between Kogi and Abaji in Abuja at about 4pm on the fateful day, the suspects stopped a bus preceding the bus one of the victims/narrators boarded, shot at the bus and the passengers and the late Nkechi was cut by one of the bullets and she died at the spot, while they used the preceding bus to wage the bus in which one of the narrators boarded and kidnapped all of them, 22 in number.
They informed that they seized their handsets, took them to a nearby bush, made them to track, until they stopped by 5:30 am at an unknown place, beat the hail out of them and used rags to tie round their eyes, forced each of them to pay N1million for his or her freedom; informing that they paid the ransom through their relations’.
They said they were warned not to disclose any information to journalists, the law enforcement agents, authorities or individuals, or face the consequences.