It wasn't business as usual when kidnappers in Rivers State threw in an option of providing assorted machine guns as payment, for the release of the woman they abducted.
It was a surprise to the Police force in Rivers State when two kidnappers demanded an AK-47 rifle and machine guns as ransom for their abducted victim, a Mrs. Chinyere Olumma.
The Rivers State Police Command revealed that the suspected kidnappers confessed they had given the family of the victim an option of paying N50m as ransom or providing one AK-47 and 12 general purpose machine guns before their victim would be released.
“They demanded N50m with an option of providing one AK-47 rifle and 12 RPMG, that is General Purpose Machine Gun. The kidnappers called the family of the victim to give them N1m for the upkeep of the victim and themselves.
"The N1m you see with them is the money they demanded for the upkeep of the victim and themselves. So, this money you are seeing is the N1m that was given to them. They (kidnappers) did not know we were tracking them after they received the N1m.
“So, we tracked and caught them at Abua. When our men got there, they were four and they were with the money before they were arrested. You can see the charms we recovered from them. On their way coming from their hideout, their colleague from behind opened fire on our men.
"Our men injured one of the hoodlums, who later died in a hospital and then, one of them escaped. The two we have here could not escape and out of the pressure mounted on them, they took our men to where they kept the woman (their victim) inside the bush near Egbeda,” Mohammad said.