A housewife in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, and her four-man gang were arrested last Friday after police foiled an attempt by the gang to kidnap her three children in Rumuagholu, near the state capital.
The arrest took place at Phase D Close, Rumuagholu Road in Obio/Akpor Local Government area of Rivers State, following a tip-off from a taxi driver which the suspected kidnappers hired for the operation.
Sources from the area said the woman popularly known as Mama Princess, who hails from AkwaIbom State is married to a retired soldier and runs a supermarket in front of her husband’s compound, where the botched kidnap attempt took place.
The source further said the woman approached the kidnappers to abduct her daughter, Princess, and her brothers and after paying them and giving them the description of her children, she told her husband that she was travelling outside Port Harcourt and her husband granted her request, so she “travelled” on Wednesday, September 18.
Mama Princess reportedly told the kidnappers to execute the plot on Thursday September 18 while her sales girl would be taking the kids to a midweek service at the headquarters of Salvation Ministries at Birabi Street, new GRA, behind Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt.
The Newswriter however learnt that she preferred Wednesday, because the children would be more vulnerable as their father will not go with them to church as he normally attends the service straight from his office, so there will be little or no resistance from the maid.
On Thursday, Mama Princess was calling the sales girl constantly to hurry them to go to church but at a point, the maid got tired of her mistress constant calls and decided to switch off her phone.
Moreover, when the maid met a heavy traffic jam at the Rumuokoro axis of Port Harcourt, she changed her mind and took the children to a branch of the church at Rumuagholu Town Hall for the service.
After the kidnappers have waited endlessly for their victims at the agreed point, and the woman’s inability to get across to the maid through phone, the kidnappers decided to visit the family house at Rumuagholu, where they met no one; but when they enquired from the neigbours, they were told that the family had gone to Church at GRA.
The kidnappers left but the taxi driver came later in the night to meet the woman’s husband but the man refused to open his gates because it was late in the night.
Early in the morning, the taxi driver came back and knocked on the gate and when the the ex-soldier asked him whom he is, the driver told him he is not a thief but he has a confession to make and asked the man to call the police if he cannot trust him.
The ex-soldier put a call across to the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) whose men arrived within minutes and the driver narrated how he was hired by the kidnappers for the operation and when they discovered that he was aware of their evil ploy they forced him to join them, with a threat to kill him, if he dare back out.
After the plot failed on Thursday, the driver said the kidnappers gave him a N100, 000 and asked him to join them the next for the operation but the man said his conscience blamed him when he found out that the family was members of Salvation Ministries like himself.
After the driver’s confession, the policemen asked him to play along with the kidnappers and the man was asked to take the children to safe place.
Subsequently, both the children’s mother and the kidnappers were arrested.
