A mother of one of the freed members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), abducted along the Owerri-Onitsha expressway last Thursday, says N6 million was paid to secure the release of her son.
She spoke in an interview on Wednesday, where she said the abductors initially demanded N50 million for each victim before eventually settling for N6 million for her son.
In her words: “Initially, they asked us to pay N50 million per head. We asked whether the amount was for all of them, but they insisted that no, it was for each person. Later, we started begging them to take N500,000. But they said no and started scaring us,” she said in Yoruba.
“Three days ago, they called and said we should pay N15 million. We kept begging them that all we had was N5.5 million. They said no and insisted on N6 million. So, it’s that N6 million we paid.”
Asked how they paid the ransom, she said the abductors asked the victims’ parents to send three representatives to meet with them in Ibadan.
“They called all the parents of all the victims. Twenty of them are in the bush. They then asked us to send three persons each to meet with them in Ibadan. My husband and my son’s elder brother went.
“When they got to the meeting place, they asked them to send the money to an account and that when they got to Imo state, they should change the money into dollars.”
The woman said her elder son was among those who met with the abductors and took the ransom to them.
“It is not rumours. They have all been released and sent to us. His brother is among the people who went to meet with the abductors three days ago. They left with the ransom,” she said.
“It was the brother who called us this evening to say that they had handed the ransom to the kidnappers and that they had released our son. We also spoke to the boy.”
The woman, whose name was not disclosed in the interview, said the trauma of her son’s abduction left her unable to sleep throughout the period he was in captivity.
“Since he was kidnapped, I have been stooling. I couldn’t sleep either. But I was relieved when I heard they had been released. It was as though the chains all over me were loosened,” she said.
BACK STORY
The prospective NYSC members were abducted in the early hours of October 1 after gunmen attacked two 18-seater buses carrying passengers from Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, before corralling them into the forest.
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