The Sun News On-line

Residents of Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, had cause to smile recently when some people suspected to be kidnappers were arrested. For the kidnappers, the end had come, as their faces were full of disappointment and dashed hope.

Alex Elenwo, father four and Ogbonna Kalu, had, in two separate incidents, tried to kidnap people, including innocent children for ransome.
Nemesis, however, caught up with them and they were arrested before they could complete their self-assigned filthy deals.

Last April 23, in Port Harcourt, 38-year-old Elenwo was arrested after his plot to kidnap his employer’s three children blew up in his face.

His hapless young victims, two-year-old Princess, four-year-old Bimbo and their seven-year-old elder brother, Ayo, all children of a senior official of Nigerian Agip Oil Company, Mr. Deji Aderibigbe, trusted him as their family driver for two years. His duty was to drive the kids to school.

Unknown to the kids, their "Uncle Alex" had, in collaboration with a man, organized their abduction for ransom. The children were kidnapped quite all right, but by the wrong persons – policemen who had presented themselves to him as militants from Warri in Delta State.
The ambitious driver had contacted a friend to help hire gunmen for the abduction. Luckily for the Aderibigbes, the friend "hired" policemen instead.

Elenwo did not know he had talked to the wrong persons until the ‘hostage-takers,’ who had successfully kidnapped his master’s children, including little Princess who was fond of the driver, latter came for him.

As a matter of fact, he had thought his wicked plot had pulled through because apart from shooting into the air before leaving with the kids, the fake abductors later called his master for N20 million ransom.
Like Elenwo, 18-year-old Ogbonna Kalu, a taxi driver, conspired with two friends now at large, to kidnap a fellow driver, who is in the employ of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

On the appointed date, the crooked trio waylaid their target (names withheld) somewhere in Rumumasi, as the man was driving to somewhere with his one-and-half-year-old son in his Toyota Corona Car. The hoodlums successfully forced their way into the car and ordered their victims at gunpoint to surrender the key. Mistaking them to be armed robbers, the Shell driver begged them to take his car and spare him and his son.

Apparently, taking them unawares, the man summoned up the courage to give them a fight.
Holding Kalu firmly, the man raised an alarm and during the struggle, one of the car doors flung open and the two of them fell out while the other two men drove away in the car, with the baby.

Kalu, whose gun also fell out, was consequently arrested and the car and the baby were found the next day at Woji, a Port Harcourt suburb, where they were abandoned by the fleeing criminals.