The marauders returned to the community on Wednesday, after they had abducted six persons from the area a day earlier.
Kidnappers operating in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, are becoming more daring by the day as they have started collecting ransom from their victims via bank accounts contrary to their usual style of receiving cash.
According to Daily Trust, kidnapping in the last few weeks is rife in Tungan Maje community on the outskirts of the FCT.
The marauders returned to the community on Wednesday, after they had abducted six persons from the area a day earlier.
Other FCT suburbs such as Kuje, Bwari and Abaji have experienced staggered spikes in kidnapping in the last few months.
It was gathered that the kidnappers a few weeks ago picked up their victims, Mrs Aminat Adewuyi and four others at Madalla junction when going on shopping to the popular Ibrahim Babangida Market in Suleja, Niger State.
It was gathered that the victims’ relatives paid ransoms ranging between N500,000 and N1,000,000 to a designated bank account provided by the kidnappers before they secured their freedom.
A brother of Mrs Adewuyi, who did not want his name in print, said while negotiating with them, said the criminals initially demanded N5million from each of their victims.
The kidnappers later agreed to collect N500,000 from Adewuyi’s relatives after two days and much pleas.
The negotiator said the criminals threatened to slaughter the woman if the ransom was not paid within 48 hours and insisted that they preferred collecting the ransom via bank than the usual cash.
Narrating her ordeal, Adewuyi said, “We boarded a bus at a junction opposite SARCO filling station, near the popular NYSC junction in Kubwa when going to Suleja Market.
“Majority of the passengers in the bus alighted at Zuba. The driver wanted to drop off the remaining few passengers also but he managed to take us to Madalla junction – the road that leads to Dakwa.
“But when we got to Madalla junction, the driver said we should board another vehicle going to Suleja. The remaining five of us (women) stop a vehicle calling “Suleja! Suleja!!” and the bus driver settled him and we left.
“Immediately we entered, the driver ‘centrally locked’ all the doors and wound up all the windows. It was that time we knew that all the glasses were tinted. Four of us sat at the back seat, one sat together with a man in front including the driver.
“When they finished whining up the glasses, they brought out guns, knives and bottles of coke, saying we should cooperate. They ordered us to drink the coke mixed with codeine but I insisted I wouldn’t.
“The man in front raised a knife and gave me only codeine to drink but I pretended as if I had taken it. He could not do anything with his weapon because it was so tight in the vehicle.
“Some of the victims who took the coke had started sleeping before we reached the bush where they took us to.
“Despite the fact that I didn’t sleep, I can’t recognise where they took us to. I only know that the vehicle that conveyed us turned left immediately after Kwata (the popular place they are selling meat) before Suleja. Kwata is after Kwankwashe.
“Our vehicle drove into the bush and when it couldn’t go further, because the remaining road was a pathway, three persons that had already been waiting for them with bikes, conveyed us with their bikes into the deep bush.
“There was only one house in that bush. They kept us there and they were giving us bread and sachet water. One of us was released that same day because she had money in her account and transferred it to them immediately, we got there.
“They were already sharpening their knives to slaughter me after two days when they couldn’t get an alert from my husband. It was only God that saved me that day.”
Adewuyi’s husband, at the time, said he had formally reported the matter at the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Nigerian Police in Jabi.
When contacted, the Spokesperson for the FCT Police Command, ASP Mariam Yusuf, said the command has deployed overt and covert strategies to checkmate criminality within FCT including special Anti-Kidnapping operations.