Two people have been arrested by police for alleged complicity in the kidnapping of the wife of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Margaret Emefiele.
The police have begun a manhunt for four other accomplices while the ransom money has been recovered.
A source said: “The police have in their custody the money that was paid to the criminals as ransom before Mrs. Emefiele was rescued.”
Gunmen abducted Mrs. Emefiele along with her driver and three other females riding with them in an SUV along the Benin-Agbor Road on September 29, 2016.
They were rescued at half-past midnight of October 1, 2016 by a team of crack police investigators from the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Special Intelligence Monitoring Team led by Abba Kyari, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP).
Following the abduction, IGP Ibrahim Idris ordered the deployment of his special squad backed by aerial surveillance to comb the entire area.
The abductors, on realising the value of their ‘catch’ after establishing contact demanded for N100 million, but was negotiated to about N2 million. They were given the money before Mrs. Emefiele, her driver and three co-travellers were rescued.
Meanwhile, the police leadership is yet to issue any official statement regarding the incidence, as investigations are ongoing, but our correspondent learnt that the two people are giving police interrogators useful information that would lead to the arrest of other suspects on the run.
According to the source, the men were caught following co-ordinated intelligence and painstaking investigation by the IGP Intelligence Response Team (IRT) in close collaboration with the family after contact was established.
The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, in a statement signed by the Acting Director, Corporate Communication, Isaac Okoroafor, thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for giving the directive that his wife should be rescued within 24 hours and the police for their efforts even though he paid a ransom that was already negotiated.
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