A suspect, Ifeanyi Asiegbuelam, has narrated how he helped the late billionaire kidnapper, Collins Ezenwa, popularly known as E-money, to kidnap many rich people from the South-East, especially in Imo and Abia states.
However, Asiegbuelam, 32, lamented that despite aiding Ezenwa to perpetrate the crimes, he did not make him rich.
Ezenwa, a dismissed police corporal, was killed in January 2018 during a gun duel with policemen attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Imo State Police Command when he attempted to kidnap a South-African-based Nigerian businessman in Owerri.
More than 13 buildings including a hotel, belonging to the late kidnapper were reportedly traced by operatives of the Inspector-General of Police Intelligence Response Team to Abia, Imo and Enugu states, while seven cars, two SUVs, one Hilux truck, a commercial bus, two tipper-lorries and a trailer belonging to him were also recovered from several locations within the South-East.
Asiegbuelam, who was arrested recently by policemen in Cross Rivers State and handed over to IRT operatives, claimed that he met E-money, who was killed alongside two other gang members, five years before he joined the Nigeria Police Force.
He said they were both motorcycle operators in Owerri before E-money joined the police.
Speaking to City Round during the week, Asiegbuelam, a primary school dropout from Atah town, Ikeduru Local Government Area of Imo State, said he lost his father while he was young and later had to live with his uncle in the North.
After some years, the suspect said he returned to Owerri to become a commercial motorcyclist.
He said, “Few years into the trade, I met E-money in Owerri and he was also an okada rider at the time. E-money and I became very close friends.
“We did the job for five years before he joined the police. He asked me to join him but I told him I had no school certificate. He went ahead to join the police and started driving police vehicles around Owerri.”
Asiegbuelam said after a while, he stopped seeing E-money in town and that later in 2017, he heard that E-money had travelled out of the country.
