24th August, 2010
Unidentified gunmen in Bauchi metropolis have abducted a 10-year-boy, Mahmud Dahiru, the police authorities said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mahmud, son of Alhaji Garba Dahiru, a former Bauchi State Commissioner of Finance, was abducted on Sunday evening in his father’s residence at the Federal Low Cost Housing Unit, Bauchi.
The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) for Bauchi State Command, ASP Mohammed Barau, told NAN in Bauchi on Monday that the boy was abducted at about 5.30 p.m.
Barau explained that some unidentified gun men had attacked Dahiru and robbed him of N150,000.
The police image maker said the gunmen forcefully took away the 10-year-old child after collecting the N150,000 from Dahiru but failed to get more when they demanded for it.
Barau said the police were not investigating a case of kidnapping as is being rumoured, but a case of armed robbery and abduction.
He said that the police had mounted checkpoints to screen vehicles going in and out of Bauchi metropolis.
Barau said that Police Divisional Offices sharing boundaries with the metropolis had also been placed on alert to nab the suspected robbers. The police spokesman denied the suggestion that the abductors demanded N11 million as ransom from the parents of the child.
NAN correspondent who visited the residence of the parents of the abducted child on Monday, reports that friends, relations and other well-wishers have been visiting to sympathise with them.
The father of the abducted boy told NAN that he could not speak on the issue until Tuesday.