Gunmen kill businessman, demand N20m to free wife

AKaduna businessman Alhaji Sheriff Abidu Yazid was yesterday shot dead by gunmen on the KadunaAbuja Expressway, while his wife was taken away.

Daily Trust gathered from a family source that the kidnappers have demanded for a N20 million ransom to free the wife. A source later said the wife had been released after payment of ransom.

Daily Trust learnt that late Sheriff was shot on the neck.

When our reporter visited the crime scene, near Kakau toll gate, villagers said when they heard gunshots, they quickly alerted the police who were just a stone throw away. But the gunmen were said to have disappeared into the nearby forest before the police arrived.

Our correspondent, who visited the deceased’s family house on Jabi road in Kaduna reports that the body of late Alhaji Sheriff Abidu Yazid was later brought back to the family house before he was taken to the Sultan Bello mosque for funeral prayers.

Sympathizers trooped to the house immediately the news of the death of the late businessman was broken. They described him as a man of integrity.

He was buried according to Islamic rites at the Isa Kaita road Muslim cemetery.

Sheriff’s father Alhaji Abidu Yazid, a development economist, was responsible for drawing up the first development plan of the then North Central State in 1970.

He was also part of the special Federal Government’s Planning Team that produced the Reconstruction Development Plan for the liberated defunct East Central State immediately after the cessation of the Nigerian civil war.