The Ogun State Police Command has arrested one Usman Hassan, a principal suspect among kidnappers who abducted and killed an Ibadan farm owner, Oluwole Agboola.
Disclosing the arrest of the kidnap suspect, the police spokesman in the state, DSP Abimbola Oyeyemi, said in a statement on Monday that Hassan had started recruiting other Fulani men to form another kidnap gang in the state.
According to him, Hassan is the brother of Usman Tahiru, a staff member of the late Agboola, who confessed that he collected N50,000 as his share of the ransom paid by the family of the late farm owner.
Hassan, whose accomplices had been arrested in Oyo State after the kidnap of Agboola at Solalu Village, before he was later killed, had run to Ogun State to hide after he knew that the police was after him.
Oyeyemi said, “He (Hassan) ran out of luck when detectives of Ogun State Police Command got information about his activity from the Fulanis he had tried to recruit into his kidnap team.
“His hideout in Imala area was stormed by the detectives and he was promptly arrested.”
According to the PPRO, when interrogated, Hassan opened up on how he conspired with his biological brother, Tahiru Usman, and others, to kidnap their victim in the Akinyele area of Ibadan, confessing that Agboola was killed after the gang had collected the ransom because their victim knew and could identify them.
Oyeyemi noted that the state’s Commissioner of Police, Edward Ajogun, had directed that the suspect be transferred to the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Eleweran, Abeokuta, from where he would be transferred to Oyo State Police Command for further interrogation and subsequent prosecution.
However, according to Tribune Online, Hassan when interviewed said he was not privy to the kidnap of his brother’s late boss, but was only asked by his brother, Tahiru, to bring three Fulani men to a junction close to the farm on the day of the kidnap.
Hassan said he left immediately and only saw Tahiru some days later, adding that his brother could not give a good account of his boss’s whereabouts when asked.
However, he said that when he questioned his brother after hearing about his boss’s death, Tahiru told him that Agboola was killed after his family paid a ransom because he could recognise his kidnappers.
Meanwhile, Hassan said that contrary to his brother’s claim that he gave him N50,000 on the third day after the kidnap, it was his brother who later gave him N20,000 to repair his motorcycle.
He swore with the Qur’an that he did not know that it was part of kidnap money, saying that his brother was just trying to put him into trouble by mentioning his name as one of the kidnap planners.
Hassan said he had to flee Ibadan for Ogun State when he heard about all the things his brother said, and how the police had mounted a search for him.
