A Lagos-based businessman, Alhaji Kabir Muraino, has declared that his wife, Hadijat, staged her own kidnap and that of her daughter with the intention of extorting money from him. Hadijat had allegedly contracted five persons, including a herbalist, to help carry out her plans.
Suspect who staged her own kidnap in the middle and her accomplices
She had allegedly told her accomplices that they should tell her husband of 27 years that they had abducted her and her sick daughter. Kabir told journalists yesterday at the Lagos State Police Command headquarters, Ikeja, where his wife was detained, that those she hired to collect the said sum threatened to kill her if the money was not paid.
He said: “The kidnappers were demanding for N15 million from me before they would release my wife and daughter. They threatened on the phone that they would kill the two of them. I was afraid and did not know what to do. I pleaded with them because I didn’t know what they would do next. I told them that I did not have such an amount but they insisted on it.
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“From the background, I could hear my wife crying and pleading with them. I never knew she faked her kidnap. I told them that I would pay them N500,000 but they refused. They reduced the money from N15 million to N5 million.
The negotiation continued and they later reduced the ransom to N4 million. It was then I decided to inform the police. I was shocked when I later got to know that it was my wife who staged the whole thing.”
Kabir said that he earlier this year gave N300,000 to his wife to do business. He claimed that, in the same vein, one of his sons also gave her N150,000, bringing the total to N450,000.
“I wonder what she needed N15 million for. She did not invest the money I gave her in any business,” he added.
