Two members of the Special Military Task Force (STF) on Jos crisis, code named ‘Operation Safe Haven’ have been named as accomplices in the kidnapping of Pa Michael Obi, the father of Super Eagles and Chelsea Football Club of England midfielder, Mikel Obi.
The Plateau State commissioner of police, Dippo Ayeni, made the disclosure while a dressing journalists at the Police headquarters in Jos, the Plateau State capital, yesterday.
The commissioner gave the names of the soldiers as Sgt Victor Essien and Pte. Jaduwa Thloma.
According to Ayeni, the command would carry out an “exhaustive and coherent investigation that will bring to book all that were involved directly and indirectly in this criminal operation.”
He said: “On August 5, at about 6pm when Pa Obi was returning from office, about five military personnel in Army colour Hilux pick-up blocked his (Pa Obi’s) vehicle near SSS building on the way to Air Force Base.
“He was ordered by the military personnel out of his vehicle and was told that the officer in charge of the formation wanted him at the headquarters.”
Pa Obi told journalist in Jos that he was given the beating of his life and knocked out after his abductors drugged him.
According to him, he was driven from the military vehicle into a flashy car and sandwiched in the midst of four persons, two in the front and two with him at the back of the car, to Kano State in an unimaginable reckless speed while his head was bowed throughout the journey.
He added that two more accomplices were female – Hajiya Awa Abubakar and Nkechi Osai.
The CP added Pa Obi arrived at Kano at about 9pm in a state of comma because of the drugs.
When he woke the next day, “one Mr. Ifeanyi Hyacinth asked him to give them $4 million which he called a chicken change to Mikel and his club, Chelsea.”
However, the discovery of Pa Obi’s whereabouts came as a result of the arrest of one Jacob Cromwell, a dismissed police corporal in Jos on August 21, 2011.
The next day, police detectives from the Plateau State CID, complemented by their counterparts from Kano State, stormed the house at Kabuga BUK road in Kano where Pa Obi was kept “and he was rescued without any ransom paid.”
The Police boss stated that Ifeanyi Hyacinth, Ndubuisi Friday, Basil Chukuma, Nkechi Osai, Hajiya Awa Abubakar and Sule Ibrahim, a Nigerien citizen, were the suspects who were arrested.
Effort by our correspondent to get to the spokesman of STF, Captain Charles Okeocha, to comment on the allegation against his men were abortive as his mobile cell phone was switched off up until the time of filing this report.