Kidnappers holding 20 prospective National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members abducted in Imo State have reportedly begun beating their captives and cut their ransom demand from ₦1 billion to ₦100 million, after failing to get the original sum from the victims’ families.
A relative of one of the victims, Alhaja Alimot Akande, said the abductors first demanded ₦50 million per victim, totalling ₦1 billion, but have now lowered it to ₦5 million each, which comes to ₦100 million.
Akande, who spoke through her daughter in Ibadan on Sunday, alleged that the captors had started assaulting the victims, women included.
“When I spoke to my sister, they started beating them since yesterday,” she said.
Asked whether the female victims were also being assaulted, she said: “They are not sparing anybody. They are beating all of them.”
She added that one of the victims was allowed to speak with his father, with the abductors monitoring the call to gauge the families’ ability to raise the ransom.
The victims were travelling from Ibadan, Oyo State, to NYSC orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom States on Thursday, October 2, when gunmen attacked two commercial buses around Umunoha on the Owerri-Onitsha Road in Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State.
Some of the victims identified by their parents are Makinde Mary Oluwapelumi, Akande Kehinde Morufat, Abdul Temiloluwa Sarah, Adeniran Mariam Olulola, Adefioye Ayomide Isaac, Adewale Paul Iyanuoluwa and Oyede Esther Funmilayo.
