Fake Ogun vigilante service commandant, aide arrested for kidnapping

A third suspect is still at large

An alleged fake Commandant of the Ogun State Vigilante Service, Gbenga Adesanya, alongside his aide, Sodiq Osanyintola, were on Monday arrested for alleged kidnapping and wounding their victim.

A third suspect, Oye Atunbi, is still at large.

Messrs Adesanya and Osanyintola were arrested by the Vigilante Service, and transferred to the Ogun State Police Command at Eleweran, Abeokuta for further interrogation.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the suspects abducted one Kehinde Owoniko, a female SS1 student of Egba High School, Asero, at gun point when she went to the bus to urinate. The victim was reportedly threatened and a blade used to cut her wrist and chest; the wounds were then rubbed with a black powder.

The girl, who later narrated her ordeal to PREMIUM TIMES, showed the incisions on her wrists and chest.

Ms. Owoniko said she was taken to a car parked nearby with two other victims already inside it. She said that the kidnappers asked for the phone numbers of the parents of all the victims before driving them to their hideout.

“At the hideout, they called my mother’s phone but it was unavailable, while the parents of the other victims were reached. Their parents later came and paid all our ransoms and we were then released.

“I didn’t get home until about 9.00 p.m. where I narrated my ordeal to my parents,” she said.

The Owonikos reported the kidnap the following day at the headquarters of the Vigilante Service, and the kidnappers were subsequently traced to their hideout and arrested.

The Public Relations Officer of the Vigilante Service, Soji Ganzallo, confirmed the incident, adding that exhibits recovered from the kidnappers included one shotgun and eleven fake identity cards.