One of the victims of notorious kidnap kingpin, Chukwudi Dumeme Onwuamadike popularly known as Evans has shared his experiences under the terror gang.
In an interview with Vanguard, James Uduji, who paid the highest ransom of $1.2m to gain his freedom, said he was in captivity for 42 days.
According to him, Evans was a terror who chained, blindfolded and fed his captives poorly, stressing that he maltreated most of them and even killed some who failed to co-operate with him.
Uduji said: “How they operate is that, they keep a hostage keeper, which is someone that would be guiding kidnap victims so that any time their boss wants to call, he would call that person.
“When he calls the person, the person would bring the phone to the victim and hold the phone for you to talk to him.
“They were always communicating. They did not maltreat me because of my condition but I heard them maltreating the victim in the other room with hot iron and the person would be crying.
“Before they start that, they would go and put on their generator so that their neighbours would not be hearing. That guy was a terror.
“They were feeding me with one useless (noodles). I was just managing to eat to keep my life moving. They asked what kind of drugs I was taking but I told them I was not on drugs. I did not make trouble with them but there was a day I tried to escape. I was scared whether all the neighbours were their gang members or not.
“Again, even if I would have escaped, I would have been naked because before you go to the bathroom, they take away your boxers. When you finish, you knock at the door and turn your face to the wall as they gave you your boxer to wear.
“They would blind fold you and put you in chains again. Early morning, I used to hear siren and I thought, that it was police that were coming to rescue me. At the end nothing would happen. They would go. What were they coming to do there around 4:00 am to 5:00 am? I noticed that five times and I asked myself, ‘what the police are coming there to do?’
“I was praying every minute of the day, waiting for anything that would happen the next day. It was traumatised. So many things happened. I knew that, nothing would happen to me but they would charge me more money.
“You know, I paid $1.2 million. We paid it in three installments. We paid two hundred thousand dollars, eight hundred thousand dollars and another two hundred thousand dollars. He claimed that, the first two hundred dollars we paid had been cancelled because we set them up by inviting security agents to be tracking them. That’s how we were accused and that the payment had been rubbished.
“He bargains with the victims, he doesn’t bargain with the families. Whatever he asked for that is what the family would pay. A person that is under chain, what would he say? Anything they asked you to do, you just had to do it because of your life. That was not joke, they meant business.
“If you refused to co-operate, they would kill you. I am sure; they have killed some people there. I stayed there for six weeks. I was abducted on the 7th of September and I was released on the 19th of October, 2015.”
