I got N50,000 from kidnap of Syrian – Boat operator

A boat operator, John Ayeni, who the police alleged was a member of a kidnapping gang have been arrested alongside three others over the abduction of a Syrian, LungynCamal, at the Eko Atlantic City, Lagos.

Ayeni, 45, who the Lagos State Police Command paraded yesterday with the other three suspects, admitted he collected N50,000 as his share of the ransom the gang collected on the kidnapping job.

The other suspects in police net are Tijani Gafari, 38; OjonlaOyetakin, 30, and Paul Orimisan, 38.

Ayeni stated in his confessional statement that the head of the kidnapping gang, whom he identified simply as Job, co-opted him into the job.

He said, “I met Job at the Liverpool jetty. He asked me to take him in my boat with three other men to Lekki. I took them there on the night of March 15, 2020. On arrival at Lekki, the four men disembarked from the boat and headed into Eko Atlantic. He asked me to wait for a while.

“They came back with a white man and hastily entered the boat. The white man’s head was covered. Job asked me to move immediately they boarded. We left for a creek at Epe that night.

He paid me N50,000 for my service and I left.”

The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, Hakeem Odumosu, who paraded the suspects before journalists yesterday at the Command Headquarters, Ikeja, said that on July 24, 2020, at about 2pm, police operatives acting on credible information from the Command’s Anti-Kidnapping Unit, arrested the four men.

Odumosu alleged that the gang was responsible for series of kidnapping and robbery which occurred along the Lagos waterways recently.

“The gang, on March 15, 2020, abducted Salisu Mansur and Christopher Chinda at the Landmark Beach.

“The same gang, on April 12, 2020, also kidnapped LungynCamal, a Syrian citizen, at Eko Atlantic, all on the waterways. They confessed to the crimes,” he said.