A brave mother, Mrs Priscilla Ekpenyong,
on Friday damned the consequences by clinging to a moving vehicle in
order to rescue her nine-month-old child, Emmanuella, from the hands of
fleeing abductors.
The abductors had pushed the 23-year-old
woman out of the moving vehicle, but she held on to her daughter and
was dragged on the tarred road for some distance before the kidnapping
was aborted by security operatives.
The incident happened by the Eburutu Army
Barracks along the busy Murtala Mohammed Highway in Calabar, the Cross
River State capital.
Narrating her ordeal at the Police Clinic
in Calabar, where she and her daughter received medical attention from
bruises sustained during the incident, Priscilla said she boarded the
taxi, a Volkswagen Jetta, at the Pyramid Hotel Bus Stop along the
highway with another unidentified woman who was carrying a male child.
She said shortly afterwards, the taxi stopped to pick two men, who on entering the vehicle demanded the babies in the vehicle.
Priscilla said, “I entered a taxi at
Pyramid Hotel Bus Stop on a journey to my village, Idoma, in the Biase
Local Government Area. Another lady was also in the vehicle with her
son, but when we got to the Army Barracks junction, two men joined us.We
thought they were passengers, but as soon as they got in, they started
dragging our babies with us.
“I was sitting in the front with the
driver, while the other woman was sitting at the back with her baby too.
The two men sat at the back and while one of them was dragging the
other woman’s baby (a boy), the other man was also dragging my daughter.
“The luck I had was that I strapped my
baby in a tummy-carrier and the man struggled to remove the baby inside
the carrier. He succeeded in removing my baby’s hand from the carrier
and she started crying. He almost pulled my baby’s hand off, so I
shouted for help.
“He then pushed me out of the vehicle,
but I held on to my baby. The vehicle dragged me on the road from the
Army Barracks junction to Sampet Filling Station, a distance of about
500 metres, before some security agents intervened. They caught the man
who was trying to snatch my baby and took him to the Federal Housing
Police Station. I don’t know where the others went.”
The state Police Public Relations
Officer, Mr. Hogan Bassey, said the taxi driver and other accomplices
escaped, while a suspect, Victor Edem-Bassey, was arrested and was being
detained at the headquarters of the Cross River State Police Command in
Calabar.
Edem-Bassey told PUNCH Metro that the harsh economic realities forced him into stealing children.
Edem-Bassey (30) from the Akpabuyo Local
Government Area of the state, said he was introduced to the business by a
friend, named Essien.
It was gathered that Edem-Bassey and his
fleeing accomplices pretended to be passengers while another
co-conspirator posed as a commercial driver.
Edem-Bassey said they were to take the
stolen children to one Albertino who was introduced to him by Essien
around the Eight-Miles area of the the Calabar metropolis.
The suspect, who claimed he had a 13-year-old son, said he was a taxi driver, but lost his job after he fell sick.
He said, “I fell sick and the owner of
the car I was driving collected it from me. After he collected it, there
was no money to survive. Essien came to me and told me about this
business. He said he would take me to his boss who would help me.
“He then introduced me to a man called
Albertino, who said he would solve all my problems if I bring babies to
him. He did not say he would pay me anything but he promised to solve
all my problems. I met him in a joint at Eight Miles, but I don’t know
where he lives. He was driving a jeep. I met him at the Old Market
Road. He told me to bring the babies to him.”
It was gathered that the police had arrested Essien, and was being detained at the command headquarters.
The PPRO said the arrest would aid the
police in unravelling the mystery of child stealing in the state, adding
that it was obvious that the suspects were kingpins.
Calabar had in recent weeks been under the menace of kid abductors. The children that had been snatched had yet to be found.
Follow Me On WWW.TWITTER.COM/CRISAIGBE
