By   Anayo OKOLI, Umuaha
TWENTY-HOURS after the 15 kidnapped pupils of Abayi International School, Aba were rescued by the joint military task force, five persons, a Customs officer, a woman, and three students of Federal Government College, Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State, were freed, yesterday,  by  anti-terrorist operatives, in Onicha Ngwa, Obingwa Council area of Abia State.

The students were returning to school from Lagos where they spent their holidays  when the vehicle they boarded in Aba enroute Ikot Ekpene  was hijacked and they were abducted by  hoodlums.

Six  students were actually in the bus  and abducted, but only three  were rescued by the anti-terrorist  squad. One of them  was said to  have escaped while two others were taken away along side an old woman of about 80 years. The kidnappers  were said to have run away with the three victims  when the squad came on rescue operation.

But reports received  shortly after the rescued victims were handed over to Abia State commissioner of police, Mr. Jonathan Johnson, showed  that the escaped student had called on his way to school, indicating that he was  fine.

The Customs officer, Sadiq Abubakar, among the victims, serving in Eket in Akwa Ibom State,  had come to Aba to procure drugs for ulcer  and was returning  to his base when the incident happened.

Another rescued victim, Mrs. Ogechi Akutobi, a health worker and wife to a lawyer,  was abducted from his kitchen when she was preparing the family’s dinner. She said that the hoodlums came to her house in Customs uniform.

Meanwhile, the wife Abia State governor, Mrs. Mercy Orji, yesterday led hundreds of women, all clad in black attire to pray in all the major junctions and round-about in Umuahia, the state capital and environs, seeking God’s face and intervention in the rising wave of crimes, especially kidnapping and raping of women, in the state, especially in Aba area.