Police Lied, My Family Paid Ransom Before I Was Released – Ex-SGF Olu Falae

Contrary to the claim of Nigerian Police authority that no ransom was paid, former SGF Chief Olu Falae has disclosed that his family indeed paid a ransom before he was released by his abductors.

Recounting his ordeal on Monday, Falae said his abductors threatened to kill him every 30 minutes until they got signal that the ransom has been paid.

He said, “When the hoodlums came, they slashed me with their cutlasses, they said I was not cooperating. And they dragged me barefooted into the bush. 

“After dragging me around for about two hours, they stopped somewhere for us to rest and there they asked me to phone my wife and tell her that I have been kidnapped and taken out of Ondo State by car which was a lie.

“It was about 2.30pm on Monday we started walking with very few stops until 2am the following morning. I suspect that I must have covered a minimum of 15km. That morning I did not take anything. So all day I had no food, no water and I walked close to 15km. How I survived I cannot really remember. I had no food in my stomach, I had no shoes, my clothes were torn to shreds.

“There were six of them with three or four guns and every half an hour or so they will say, ‘Baba we are going to kill you, if you don’t give us money we are going to kill you.

“On Wednesday one of them came and said ‘look we are going to leave here on Thursday morning. Since we cannot leave you here alone, if we don’t get what we want we are going to kill you.

“And they said they gave me until 3pm and if at 3pm they don’t get the money, they would execute me. I thank God that at 21 minutes to 3pm, one of them came and said, ‘the money done complete.

“At some point, one of them gave me a rubber slippers. We walked until about 2am. At some point they called for an Okada. At about 2.30am the Okada man took me way down I had no clue where we were going. Finally they dumped me somewhere, where I was until I was released on Thursday.

“In that place, we all slept on the floor on leaves, unfortunately the rain came in the night and I was thoroughly drenched where I was lying down. One of them brought a small umbrella to cover my head, my head was covered, but the rest of my body was not covered.

“They offered me bread, but I told them I could not eat it. I demanded for a bottle of coke, which was what I drank everyday to have the requisite strength to survive and to continue on the march, because they were permanently moving”.

Falae said the kidnappers were changing locations at two to three times a day because they did not want the police to succeed in tracing them.

He further said, “The following morning, they said I should go. One of them took ropes to stitch my buba which was already in tatters, so that it could at least stay on me and I would not look like a lunatic while leaving that place. So when I came out of the bush, I was able to find an Okada, a man riding bike, who gave me a lift to Owo.

“The place was about 10km from Owo town. The place was between Owo and Ifon. And I walked most of the distances between my farm to that place and as the farrow flies, that is about 25km that we had to trek. As I said miraculously I was not tired, I was not hungry and I was not afraid of them at all. Each time they said, ‘Baba we will kill you,’ I will tell them, ‘no, insha Allah, you will not kill me.’

“I did not break down, but I want to tell you that when I got back home I became completely exhausted. But I am now 80 per cent fit and I know in the next few days I will be up again”.

It would be recalled that Chief Falae was kidnapped at his Ilado Farm in Akure last week Monday.