Abdullahi Sheriff, a 36 years old man whose wife and two children were kidnapped from his residence on Friday evening in Lokoja, Kogi State, has cried out to the state government and security agencies to rescue his five-year-old son and wife, who had just been discharged from hospital. Gunmen had stormed the Sheriff residence at Zone 12 , Zango, on the outskirts of Lokoja the state capital on Friday evening at 8.45 pm and began to shoot randomly before gaining entry into the house. They took away his wife and two children. Narrating his ordeal to newsmen on Sunday, Sheriff, a struggling young man, said he obtained a loan to complete part of his house on the outskirts of town due to pressure from his former landlord, who jerked up the rent, and packed to the new house on December 18, last year, with his family.
He said everything was going smoothly until Friday evening when he went out to get some foodstuff for his family but he later received a call from one of his wives who told him to stay away for a while as gunmen were shooting sporadically in his compound. He said he immediately swung into action and went to the vigilante office in Zango, but was asked to go and report first at the police station, which he immediately did.
To his surprise, the police said they could do nothing, as their vehicle was not on ground.
He said, “I again raced back to the vigilante office and they told me that they could not act except their boss gave them an order to do so. I was there for more than 30 minutes trying to call their boss, to no avail, while the kidnappers were still in my house shooting.
“At last,the Army came in but it was already too late. My senior wife, Abidat Sheriff, 35, who was just discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, was abducted with my daughter, Zainab Sheriff, who is one year and eight months old, and my five years old son, Mubarak. “Mubarak was abducted naked without any clothes nor shoes on him. The Army traced the Kidnappers to the forest. I followed them and we were seeing some torch lights on the mountain, which made the leader of the Army team urge them to pursue vigorously, but suddenly we started hearing another gunshots at our back and we paused to trace where the gunshots were coming from only to discover it was another group of vigilantes firing shots.
“This distracted us as the Army could not trace anything anymore, which made them to suspend the pursuit till the following day.
“However, when I waited in the morning without seeing anyone, I and some of my friends went inside the forest to comb the area for more than five hours before I was called by the police to come home and give my statement. “Meanwhile, some people drew our attention to an uncomplicated building along the bush path, where they dumped Zainab, my daughter, who had cried and cried all night, right in that area where there are dangerous snakes/.”
Also speaking to newsmen, his second wife, Mrs. Faiza Aliba Sheriff, who was in the house when the kidnappers attacked them, said Mother Luck saved her as she just went into the inner room to prepare food for her sucking baby when the gunmen raided the house. She said when they entered the house, she put out the light, covered the mouth of her baby tightly and lay under the bed, stressing that her firstborn, three years old Nazirat, was also abducted but she kept crying ferociously so that they were angered and threw her out of the window. Faiza said she later managed to escape through the back door, where she saw one of the children hiding in the store, adding that she had to crawl with the children into the thick darkness, running far away from house into the bush, before a Good Samaritan took them into his house until daybreak.
Sheriff, who broke down and wept profusely called on the Office of the National Security Adviser to provide helicopters and drones to trace the kidnappers and also called on the Army and other security agencies to do everything to rescue his wife and child who have spent two days in captivity.
Meanwhile, at the time of filing in this report, the kidnappers had not called to demand any ransom neither the police nor the state government had made any statement over the incident.
