24-year-old teacher arrested for faking own kidnap in Kwara

The Kwara State Police Command has arrested a 24-year-old female teacher, Medinat Ibrahim, for allegedly faking her own kidnap to raise money from her family.

The suspect, according to the State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Ajayi Okasanmi, was arrested in the Olude, Oke-Fomo area, Ilorin, the state capital, where she was hiding.

Okasanmi said Ibrahim committed the crime on Saturday, January 2, in order to extort money from her family to settle debts which accrued from the monthly contribution in her place of work.

Read also: Kidnapped Turkish expatriates rescued in Kwara

Ibrahim who was paraded on Thursday at the State Police headquarters alongside two accomplices, Amudalat Wahab and Hammed Lekan, by the state Commissioner of Police, Muhammed Bagega, confessed that she decided to commit the offence due to frustration and the stoppage of her salary by her employer following the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.

Ibrahim revealed that she was pushed into the crime because of the debts hanging on her head with her creditors making life difficult for her.

She added that the collapse of her business coupled with the fact that the private school where she taught as a teacher, had stopped paying her salary since the COVID-19 broke out, which made life hard for her.

“I teach in a private school where I was paid N15,000. We organised monthly contribution which I collected and invested in a business, but when COVID-19 broke out, our salary was stopped.

“Because of the collapse of my business, I could no longer continue with the contribution.

“Those who were in the group continued to mount pressure on me to pay up my own contribution and there was nowhere that I could get the money from.

“So I decided to go and hide in my sister’s place and I told someone to call my father on phone that I was kidnapped and demanded a ransom of N250,000 which was paid into my friend’s account.”

During the parade of the suspects, CP Bagega said Ibrahim conspired with her elder sister, Amudalat Wahab and Hammed Lekan to arrange her own kidnap.

The CP said a bank account belonging to Lekan was used to cash the N250,000.

A statement by Okasanmi said:

“In line with the Commissioner of Police stand, that it is not going to be business as usual, criminals are warned to pack their loads and relocate from Kwara State as the command will stop at nothing to deal with any criminal arrested no matter how highly or lowly placed.”

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