Taiwo Jimoh

Two sisters, suspected to be members of a terror group targeting medical doctors in Lagos for extortion through threats of elimination, are now in police net.

The suspects, Rita Ojobo (30) and Mrs. Emmanuella Ossai, were apprehended by the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) of the state Police Command, led by ACP Olatunji Disu. The RRS officials tracked down the syndicate and arrested two of them.

It was learnt that the RRS had contacted the International Police (Interpol) to help repatriate the other gang members who had fled to Togo. Ojobo and Ossai, along with other members of the syndicate, it was learnt, usually contact doctors on the phone to ask them to remit certain amount of money into account numbers or risk being kidnapped or murdered. Ojobo was arrested at Diamond Bank in Onitsha after she went there to withdraw money paid in by one of their victims.

However, the suspects said they knew nothing about the crime. They claimed that their older brother, Kenechi Ojobo, who resides in Togo, sent their account number to the creditors to pay in money.

The sisters also claimed that Kenechi, a motorcycle parts merchant in Togo, told them that he usually gives relatives of the creditors the CFA (Francs) equivalent of the money paid in.

Ojobo said she was invited by her bank that there was an issue with her account and rushed to the bank only to be arrested. She said: “I do not know anything about threatening people.

My brother was the one who called and told me that someone will pay in money to my account that he has given the person’s relation in Togo the equivalent in CFA. He said that he would collect the money when he comes and add it to the money to buy his goods. “But I was just in my house last Thursday when I received a call from the bank that someone has tampered with my account.

I rushed to the bank but I was arrested and taken to Central Police Station in Onitsha. It was at the bank that they told me what happened. “After they arrested me, I told them that it was only once money was paid to my account and that my brother usually uses my sister’s account for the transactions and they now took me to my sister’s house and arrested her as well.

“If I knew anything about such thing would I not have escaped when the bank called me?” But Ossai, who has a one-month-old baby, said four people had paid N220,000 into her account at different intervals which her brother had come back home to collect.

The suspect she only knew Kenechi “does local money transfer”. According to her, each time he comes home, he would collect his money to buy goods. Ossai said that she went to the bank sometime last month after her brother told her that someone had paid N50,000 but she did not get alert

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The suspects, Rita Ojobo (30) and Mrs. Emmanuella Ossai, were apprehended by the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) of the state Police Command, led by ACP Olatunji Disu. The RRS officials tracked down the syndicate and arrested two of them.