Police Storm Church, Arrest Pastor For Allegedly Collecting Ransom For Kidnappers

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A 45-year-old pastor, Ndifreke Udo Amos, has been arrested by
operatives of the FIB Intelligence Response Team (FIB-IRT) for
allegedly helping a kidnap gang in the abduction of an 80-year-old
man, Pa Anthony Ugbuzor Idornigie.

The octogenarian victim was said to be sitting in his house at
No 7, Garage Street, Itoki, Lagos on November 14 last year when
Amos walked in with a bible in his hand and started preaching to
him.

In the middle of Amos’ sermon, another stranger was said to have
walked into the compound and claimed to be in search of
accommodation. Pa Idornigie was said to have offered him one, but
the stranger said he should follow him to collect the amount
demanded as rent because he did not have the money on him.

While Pa Idornigie was said to have been reluctant about
following the stranger, Pastor Amos allegedly urged him to do so.
In the process of following the stranger, however, Pa Idornigie was
abducted by some people the police now believe were working in
cahoots with the pastor.

Three days later, Pa Idornigie’s abductors were said to have
called the family, demanding N20 million as ransom.

The police was said to have become curious about Pa Amos’
involvement in the kidnap saga on realising that a POS account
belonging to him was being used by the gang to receive the sums
paid in installments as ransom.

FIB-IRT operatives were said to have swung into action
immediately they learnt about Pa Idornigie’s plight, rescuing the
octogenarian from his abductors and tracing Amos to Agbado/Crossing
part of Lagos State where his POS kiosk was situated.

The police source said investigation into the matter revealed
that Pastor Amos was a member of the gang with the specific role of
going to the houses of would be victims to prepare the ground for
their abduction.

A female member of the gang was also said to be assigned the
role of making friends with people believed to be well doing and
could be kidnapped for ransom, while others were saddled with the
task of taking custody of the gang’s victims until their ransoms
were paid.

Members of Idornigie’s family were said to have paid various
installments beginning with N850,000 on November 17, 2020. Other
payments made to the gang, according to the police source, include
another N850,000, N250,000, N50,000, N50,000, N200,000, N650,000,
N350,000 and N150,000.

The last payment of N150,000 to the said account was said to
have been made by the police themselves and tagged “payment for
ransom” after the matter had been reported by the family; a
development said to have made Amos very uncomfortable.

A visit the FIB-IRT operatives made to Amos’ kiosk was said not
to have yielded any result as they met Amos’ absence. They were,
however, told upon enquiries that Amos was the pastor in charge of
a nearby church where a service was going on.

The operatives then joined the congregation for service during
which they monitored the suspect and planned how to arrest him
without causing a steer or disrupting the service.

They were said to have allowed the service to end before they
started following Amos to his house without him suspecting that
they were on his trail.

He was eventually picked up in a dramatic manner as he was about
to enter his house.

The operatives were said to have stopped him as he was about to
get into his compound, flashed their identity cards and told him
that he was under arrest. Thereafter, they told him to lead them to
his POS kiosk where they recovered some vital documents, including
those that were used in transactions involving the kidnapping
gang.

Amos was said to have admitted ownership of the account number
into which the ransom of N150,000 was paid, and upon interrogation
at the Southwest office of FIB-IRT headed by Joel Igbinazaka Ugowe,
a Superintendent of Police, he was also said to have confessed that
he removed the female attendant at the POS kiosk, and conducted the
transaction himself because he feared that the secret deals could
become known to the young lady.

Speaking with the reporter in an interview, Amos, who described
himself as an indigene of Akwa Ibom State, said: “I am a pastor
with The Will of God Gospel Mission church in Agbado/Crossing, a
suburb of Lagos State, and my residence is very close to the
church.

“I became a pastor in 2015 and I have been with the church since
then. I was not on salary, but the General Overseer pays me a
monthly stipend as upkeep money and also pays my children’s school
fees.

“Rich men and women as well as others who God has blessed in one
way or the other also give me money, especially when they are
giving testimonies and thanking God for what He did for them.”

Asked why he displayed his account number on his POS kiosk, he
said it was so that his customers who had need of it would have
access and not for criminal purposes.

He added: “I was riding a commercial motorcycle to augment the
upkeep money my General Overseer was giving me.

“In 2019, my General Overseer and founder of the church gave me
N300,000 to start a POS business and I started it between September
and October.

“I reside very close to my church, so I put a female operator
there because I would not be able to do the two works at the same
time.”

On the allegation that he sacked the lady attendant at his kiosk
because he feared that she could leak his deals with kidnappers, he
said: “I did not sack the girl. I only told her that I wanted to
manage the POS by myself because from what was happening, I felt
she would not be able to manage the problems with the operation of
POS.”

He also denied being the one that gave the kidnappers his
account number, saying: “Yes, it was my account details that were
sent to the victim’s family to pay in the ransom. But I was not the
one who sent it and I did not know who sent it.

“I pasted my account details in front of my POS kiosk for easy
access by my customers who might have need for it. I did not paste
it there for criminal purposes.

“Eight hundred and fifty thousand naira (#850,000) was paid
twice through my POS. They had started paying in money when my girl
was still operating the POS for me. They were paying bit by bit:
N25,000, N50,000, N50,000, N100,000, N200,000 and so on.

“The one of N150,000, I was in the church when she called me and
said the customer was in a hurry and asked me whether the money had
entered and I said yes I saw an alert with ‘ransom demand’.

“I had to call her back to explain more because I suspected that
something was fishy with the tag ‘ransom demand’.

“I later went to the nearest police station to report the
strange occurrence. When I got there and reported the matter, the
police gave me a sheet to write a statement.

“After writing my statement, they asked me to go home and relax
and see it as one of the troubles one usually experiences in that
kind of business.

“But to my greatest surprise, on the 24th February, 2021, the
same police officer who asked me to go home and relax was the
person who came and arrested me.

He took me to the police station and handed me over to
plain-clothed operatives who had been there waiting for my arrival
at the police station.

“They were very happy to see me, and that was how I was
arrested.”