By Emeka Mamah

ENUGU—THE police in Enugu State have arrested the leader of the gang who reportedly murdered a couple at Amaja Enugu Ezike in Igbo Eze North Local Government Area of Enugu State following the rescue of a kidnap victim who was rescued by the Police in a forest near their home.

However, the alleged gang leader, Odinaka Ujah was arrested following his involvement in another kidnap of an 85 year old man, Mr Francis Ojobo, from his home at Umuogbo Ulo in the area on September 11. Ojobo from Umuasanya Oko family in the area was abducted in the evening of the fateful day while relaxing in his compound.

Sources said that the kidnappers had come to abduct the victim’s wife but forcefully took him away when they were told that their target was not at home at the time of their visit.

However, Odinaka, who was in pains following gunshot wounds he received in the process of rescuing Pa Ojobo, when he spoke to Vanguard yesterday afternoon at Nsukka, blamed his involvement in criminal activities on bad friends.

“I know that I may not survive this time around but it was friends that introduced me to crime. I did not physically take part in the kidnap of Ojobo. I was invited to intervene during the negotiation for the N50 million ransom demanded.

“I have done other things but I did not participate in the actual kidnap of Ojobo. It is bad friends that lured me into this mess. It is not all the things they said that I did that are true,” Odinaka who is from a neighbouring Igogoro community to Umuogbo Ulo said.

Speaking further he said, “I am telling you the truth because I may not survive from these wounds,(pointing to his two legs which were shattered}. You can see that I have been badly wounded. I have participated in other crimes but I was not directly involved in this one. It is bad friends.”

However, sources close to members of the Igboeze North Neighbourhood Watch who participated in the arrest of Odinaka said that he had been on the wanted list since the killing of Marcel Ossai Aba and his wife, Jacinta, at Amaja in Enugu Ezike early last year.

Aba was sleeping with his wife and three children when some unknown persons woke him up and broke his head with a cutlass.

The assailants later went into his wife’s room and removed her one-year-old daughter who she was breast feeding before severing her head.

They later fled the scene of the crime without removing any material or property, even as investigations by Vanguard then revealed that Aba and his wife were killed after an abducted man from Anambra State was rescued by the Police in a bush near their residence.

It was learnt that an unidentified man whose mouth was covered with a black cloth, was seen in a bush which separates Amaja, a border community with Adupi in Benue State. Aba lived at the border with his family.

It was gathered that another woman had found the abducted man and ran back to inform her husband who consequently alerted members of the vigilante group in the area. The members of the vigilante group were also said to have alerted the nearest police station in the area, which sent detectives to free the kidnap victim.

It was gathered that the abductors of the unidentified victim usually visited him between 2 pm and 3.30 pm each day to feed him. However, sources said that when the kidnappers visited the area where they hid their victim in the bush, they were disappointed that the people living nearby alerted the Police men who untied their victim and went to the nearby house to kill the couple.

An 11 year old daughter of the deceased, Chinonso had narrated how her parents were killed in cold blood at the palace of the Onyishi Amaja, Eze Nwidoko, where the people of the area returned en- masse to discuss the strange development saying that the assailants killed her father first before killing her mother. “We were sleeping in the night when my mother noticed that some people were flashing their torches outside but were not talking.

“As she was talking, the people came into our room and took her baby who was sucking her breast away from her and threw him to Ikedi, 5, before cutting my mother’s neck.

“The whole place was dark; we did not know when they left. After waiting for some time, I went to my father’s room and saw that his head was also cut, I used the lantern which was lit by my mother before we went to bed.