Nigeria: Armed Youths Abduct Gov.-Elect's Mother

SOME seeming unorganised local terrorist gangs on Monday night, stormed Ubima, a rustic rural village in Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State,one of Nigeria's key oil and gas producing states, and abducted the aged mother of the governor-elect of the state, Sir Celestine Omehia.

Local sources told Scoop on telephone on Tuesday, that the operation had the signature of an internal conspiracy. Although security agencies have cordoned off all available escape routes in the area, our correspondent however, gathered that some unemployed Ubima youths plotted the abduction for monetary reasons.

The story has it that some dissatisfied Ubima youths reached out to a suspected militia group at Ogbakiri, a riverine community in the same local government area, to assist them with some dare-devil gunmen to perfefct the abduction deal. At what a particular source described as ''an unholy hour of the night'', the gunmen struck and took the aged woman away.

News of the incident took the state in a storm, almost marring the workers' day ceremony in the state. As Emma Okah, Governor Peter Odili's Chief Press Secretary put it,, ''the whole of Rivers state as it were, is mourning because the woman is very advanced in age. She was led by his governor-elect son to cast her vote on April 14'', the obviously dejected Okah said.

Uncomfirmed sources however, had it that those behind the plot to abduct Omehia's mother, were dreaming for a ransome of N50million. They are said to be believing that the out-going Governor Odili doled out billions of naira to Omehia to oil his electioneering campaign and as such were allegedly out for a piece of the 'show'.

In the mean time, the police in Rivers say some arrests have been made and that the suspects are helping the authorities in their investigation.

ENDS

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