An English Education graduate of University of Calabar (UNICAL), Cross River State, Andrew Ogbeche has been arrested for allegedly facilitating the murder of his boss, Egbe Ediagbonya, who was a former Commissioner for Sports in Edo State.
Ediagbonya was kidnapped on May 16, 2020. After his abduction, the kidnappers called, demanding N15 million ransom but later hurriedly collected N1 million.
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An hour later after the ransom payment, the kidnappers sent a text message to the family, telling them where to pick his corpse.
The UNICAL graduate, Ogbeche, who worked as a laborer on Ediagbonya’s palm tree farm, explained that he got N100,000 out of the N1m.
According to him:
“I relocated to Edo after my graduation in 2013 in search of greener pasture. It’s because of financial constraint that I accepted to work as a labourer at the farm of the late commissioner.
He owns a big Palm Oil farm at Okada village and I am one of his workers. The job was so demanding that I had to work twice everyday with about two hours break in-between the shifts.
Despite all these, he could only afford to pay me N10,000 a month. I should have refused that offer but I needed money to feed. I had only worked for two months before I resigned and he is still owing me salary of one month.
I had no plans to kidnap him until I became friends with one Paul and invited him to the farm. It was during one of his visits that he told me of his plans to kidnap my boss.
I disagreed but he threatened to kill me. He later told me that he had kidnapped the man and sent N100,000 to me as my share. But I never knew that they killed the man probably because the commissioner saw his face.”
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