University student kidnapped in Lagos murdered by abductor over N3m ransom

A student of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Christiana Idowu, who was kidnapped between Ikorodu and Yaba in Lagos State has been reportedly murdered by her abductor.

The Punch reports that the Student Union Government president of FUNAAB, Ibrahim Adeyemi, confirmed this to our correspondent in a telephone conversation on Thursday.

Adeyemi said, “The Union can confirm that she was reportedly killed by her abductor. We will be addressing the matter soon.”

A family source had told PUNCH Metro on August 26 that the abductors were demanding a sum of N3m as a ransom before they could release the student.

The source told our correspondent that Christiana had left her home in the Itaoluwo area of Ikorodu heading to the University of Lagos in the Yaba area of the state where she was observing her industrial training before she was abducted by the kidnappers.

The source disclosed further that after she was unreachable for a while, the abductors reached out to the family through her telephone, demanding that a ransom of N3m be paid before she could be released.

The source added that after several appeals from the family, the abductors agreed that a sum of N350,000 be paid to a certain account, which the family paid, but the abductors refused to release her despite the payment.

Meanwhile, in a now-viral post on X, a user, @letter_to_jack disclosed that intelligence operatives were able to uncover the location of the abductor through the BVN and account details used in collecting ransom from the family.

The tweet read, “Investigation by intelligence operatives began on the 26th to unravel details of the account number.

“By the 29th, intelligence operatives had confirmation from the bank that the BVN linked to the masked Betting account allegedly belonged to the account owner (name withheld for now) who also operates the Wema Bank (account no withheld for now)

“Further investigation revealed that he was able to withdraw the sum of N100,000 from the betting account before agents got the betting company to lock the account.”

He added that the operatives however traced the suspected abductor to a location in Ikorodu, Lagos State where the family of Christiana also reside.

“Armed by this information, operatives began an investigation into the suspect whom they observed to have a mutual relationship with Christiannah Idowu, especially judging by Instagram posts as they both commented on each other’s pages.

“With all this information at hand, the operatives began to track down his cell phone activities and text messages. The cell phone tracking led them to his parent’s house, somewhere in Ikorodu.”

Efforts to get the reaction of the victim’s family proved abortive as calls and messages made to the family source were not responded to as of the time of filling this report.

Also, the Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, did not respond to messages sent to his WhatsApp line even after reading the messages and was yet to respond to calls made to his line by our correspondent.