By Zahraddeen Yakubu Shuaibu
The family of Yahaya Hassan Musa, a 39-year-old businessman, was thrown into mourning as his body was found in a forest hours after his abductors received a N6m ransom.
The incident started on Thursday, when the victim, who is married with two kids, was coming back from Cotonou, Benin Republic, after a business trip and was kidnapped in a forest around Mopa area of Kogi State, with the kidnappers demanding N10m and later slashing it to N6m.
Narrating the incident to City & Crime, the late Yahaya’s brother, Abubakar Hassan Musa, who took the N6m to the kidnappers, said his brother used to fly whenever he travelled, but that on that fateful trip he decided to return by road.
He said, “The kidnappers requested that I should take the money to a forest in Kabba. I went and delivered the money in cash. They then directed me to a place where I would meet him, but I did not meet him. I slept in the forest alone.
“The following day I continued searching until a woman who was kidnapped alongside my brother called me and said they killed him before even collecting the ransom, but that she didn’t know where they dumped his body.
“I went back to the nearby town and hired hunters to get back into the forest and search for the corpse. After treking many kilometers, we found his decomposing corpse.”
He said because they couldn’t find a bus to carry the corpse because of its decaying condition, they buried him in the bush according to Islamic rites after consulting the family in Kano.
