Suspected kidnap kingpin arrested in Niger

The police have arrested a 40-year-old suspected serial killer and kidnap kingpin, Alhaji Bashiru Abdullahi of Bangi in Niger State.

The Minna Area Police Command’s tactical team in Niger State arrested the suspect in the Mariga Local Government Area of the state.

The command’s Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Wasiu Abiodun, confirmed the arrest in a press statement issued and made available to the newsmen in Minna on Saturday.

He said this was part of the police onslaught against insurgency, banditry and kidnapping in the state.

The statement added that the command arrested the suspect based on credible intelligence from a reliable source on July 14, 2022 at about 1630hrs.

According to DSP Abiodun, “the suspect was arrested at Kontagora on the above-mentioned date when he was planning and making effort to recruit armed men needed to perpetrate his usual kidnapping escapades.

“During interrogation, the suspect, Alhaji Bashiru confessed that he planned to kidnap a former Chairman, Mariga Local Government Council in the state and the father of a former Commissioner in the state.

“He claimed that the former council chairman owed him a sum of five million Naira, eight hundred thousand (N5,800,000) and that if the former council chairman was kidnapped, he intends to realise the sum of N10million as ransom from the victim,” said the PPRO.

The suspect was quoted to have further confessed that part of his plan was to equally kidnap the father of a former commissioner whom he owed about N1,300,000 from a business transaction between the two of them, highlighting that he was expecting to collect 15 million ransom from the plan.

The statement, however, revealed that sometime in March 2022, Alhaji Bashiru was suspected to have “murdered his younger brother Alhaji Mamuda Abdullahi aged 35yrs ‘m’ of Bangi and when he was interrogated, he confessed to the act that he contributed money with his brother to the tune of N79 million for a business purpose.

“But he suspected that his deceased younger brother swindled him and he hit the victim with a stick on the head which resulted to his death. He however, told the family members that his late younger brother was attacked and killed by bandits at Beri.”

Meanwhile, DSP Abiodun noted that the case is under investigation just as he assured that effort is ongoing by the police to unravel other criminal acts of the suspect as well as unveiling and arresting other suspected members of his gang.

He said as soon as the investigation is concluded that the suspect and his accomplice in crime would be arraigned in court and charged for prosecution.