A suspect , Ifeanyi Asiegbuelam, has narrated how he helped the late billionaire kidnapper , Collins Ezenwa , popularly known as E -money, to kidnap many rich people from the South- East , especially in Imo and Abia states .
However , Asiegbuelam, 32 , lamented that despite aiding Ezenwa to perpetrate the crimes, he did not make him rich .
Ezenwa , a dismissed police corporal , was killed in January 2018 during a gun duel with policemen attached to the Special Anti- Robbery Squad of the Imo State Police Command when he attempted to kidnap a South -African -based Nigerian businessman in Owerri .
More than 13 buildings including a hotel , belonging to the late kidnapper were reportedly traced by operatives of the Inspector -General of Police Intelligence Response Team to Abia , Imo and Enugu states , while seven cars, two SUVs , one Hilux truck, a commercial bus , two tipper -lorries and a trailer belonging to him were also recovered from several locations within the South- East .
Asiegbuelam, who was arrested recently by policemen in Cross Rivers State and handed over to IRT operatives , claimed that he met E -money, who was killed alongside two other gang members , five years before he joined the Nigeria Police Force .
He said they were both motorcycle operators in Owerri before E -money joined the police .
Speaking to City Round during the week , Asiegbuelam, a primary school dropout from Atah town, Ikeduru Local Government Area of Imo State , said he lost his father while he was young and later had to live with his uncle in the North .
After some years , the suspect said he returned to Owerri to become a commercial motorcyclist .
He said , “Few years into the trade , I met E -money in Owerri and he was also an okada rider at the time . E -money and I became very close friends .
“We did the job for five years before he joined the police . He asked me to join him but I told him I had no school certificate . He went ahead to join the police and started driving police vehicles around Owerri .”
Asiegbuelam said after a while , he stopped seeing E – money in town and that later in 2017 , he heard that E -money had travelled out of the country .
He said , “But a few weeks later in the same year , he showed up in my house in a dark – tinted Toyota Prado SUV , and there he invited me to join his kidnapping enterprise . On the first operation I went with him , we drove to Okigwe , where we kidnapped a man in his car.
“We accosted the vehicle and dragged the man out of the vehicle and took him into our own vehicle; then we zoomed off. E -money then asked me to blindfold the victim and when we got close to my town , E – money asked to come down from his SUV and he gave me N 50 ,000 . I didn ’ t question him and he drove the man away . I didn ’ t know where he took the man to , number of days the man spent with him , how he negotiated and collected his ransom .”
The suspect said he escaped to a bush on the day E -money was killed by the police , adding that he stayed in Owerri for two months after the incident .
He said , “ Then I got a call from Ugo, who kept one of E – money’s rifles and we formed a new gang . But on our first operation , we had trouble . Some policemen accosted us and a shootout ensued . Ugo’s friend was killed . Ugo escaped but Chimobi and I were arrested . Chimobi sustained a bullet wound in the process and we were kept in an open -cell in handcuffs . I wouldn ’t know how Chimobi got the keys to our handcuffs and we escaped again from police custody .
“I ran to Port Harcourt and stayed there for more than one year ; then I moved to Calabar when I felt the police were closing in on me in Port Harcourt . I lived in Calabar for seven months with a friend who I met in Port Harcourt and we worked on a farm . I was arrested in my friend ’s house and taken to Owerri before I was brought back to Lagos and handed over to the IRT. It was after my last arrest that I realised that E -money made so much money from our business and left me a poor man begging for money.”
