By Chris RICHARDS, Abuja
In an usual show of commitment by the Lagos state police command, all the three female students of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary, Ikorodu, Lagos state, who were kidnapped from by some armed men have been rescued.
The students were on Monday early morning taken from their hostel by the gunmen who burst through the school fence, which many Nigerians had thought it would go the usual way of endless investigation with little or no result.
However to the pleasant surprise of many Nigerians, barely six days after their kidnap, early Sunday morning in a major operation, the Lagos command of police rescued the female students unharmed. They were said to have been rescued at Igbo Okuta area of Ikorodu.
Speaking to nationalTRAIL, spokesperson for the police command, Supridenant Ifedolapo Badmus, said the operation was led by the Commissioner of Police Lagos state, Ajani Fatai Owoseni, this she said followed an intelligence.
She said that three persons were already arrested in connection with the kidnap of the female students.
The spokesperson also said that the command was still investigating, and still on the trail others who may have been involved in the crime, just as she also extend the command’s gratitude to the general public for having confidence in the police.
This is even as the kidnappers were earlier said to have contacted Victor Ayo Olusa, father of the first victim, to demand a ransom of N200m, which they later brought down to N20m per student, making N60m, which nationalTRAIL that was not paid.
nationalTRAIL could not however confirmed if any ransom was paid, considering past experiences where police would claim no ransom was paid but later victims or family members say the contrary.
The kidnapped victims are; Timilehin Olusa, Tofunmi Popo Olaniyan and Deborah Akinayo, and students of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary owned by the Anglican church.
Similarly, the Lagos commissioner of police, also confirmed that the girls were not molested by their abductors, putting to rest such fears.
The CP had in a media briefing on Sunday said that the girls “unequivocally” said that they were not molested “in any way” by captors.
“The girls are very well and they are stable,” he said.
“I can confirm that immediate medical attention just to test them up has been given to them by the police medical team and I can as well tell you that as we picked them up, one of the questions we asked the girls was whether they were molested in any way and the three of them stated unequivocally that they were not molested in any way.”
Owoseni confirmed the arrest of three suspects in the operation that led to the rescue, given names of the suspects as; Emmanuel Arigidi, who he said was actively involved, while the two; Seun Akanji and one Henry were mere “conspirators aiding the kidnapping one way or the other”.
On ransom, he said: “When you talk about ransom in cases like this, you are glorifying kidnapping. We should not be talking about ransom anymore in this country because if you do, you are telling others that kidnapping is viable and you can be going and kidnapping people to collect money.
“But I want to also say that what was employed in rescuing the girls is more of application of intelligence-led policing using the platform of technology, partnering with members of the community and pressures on the kidnappers.
“What we have done with other security agencies is that we also went for members of their families including their mothers, their fathers, their children and with that pressure they found out that there was no way again for them to keep on keeping the girls and that was what led to the success we recorded in rescuing the girls.