A suspect, Ifeanyi Asiegbuelam, has accused the late billionaire kidnapper, Collins Ezenwa, also known as E-money, of leaving him poor despite the help he rendered in abducting many rich people from the South-East, especially in Imo and Abia.
The 32-year-old was arrested recently by policemen in Cross Rivers State and handed over to IRT operatives in Lagos.
He said he met E-money five years before he ( E-money) joined the Nigeria Police Force and that they were both commercial motorcyclists in Owerri, Imo State, at the time.
Ezenwa, a dismissed police corporal, was killed alongside two other gang members in January 2018 in Owerri during a gun duel with policemen attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad in Imo during an attempt to kidnap a South-African-based Nigerian businessman.
Mr Asiegbuelam, a native of Atah town, Ikeduru Local Government Area of Imo, told Punch’s City Round during the week that he could not follow E-money in joining the Force because he was a primary school dropout.
He said that in 2017 he learnt that E-money had travelled out of the country.
He added that E-money visited him in a Toyota Prado SUV weeks later and urged him to join his (E-money) kidnapping venture.
On the day E-money was killed by the police, Asiegbuelam said he ran into a bush and stayed in Owerri for two months.
He said he joined Ugo, who kept one of E-money’s rifles, in a new gang and that they were unlucky in their first attack as he and another gang member got arrested.
Asiegbuelam said he managed to escape from police custody, then he fled to Port Harcourt and remained there for over a year.
He said: “Then I moved to Calabar when I felt the police were closing in on me in Port Harcourt. I lived in Calabar for seven months with a friend who I met in Port Harcourt and we worked on a farm. I was arrested in my friend’s house and taken to Owerri before I was brought back to Lagos and handed over to the IRT. It was after my last arrest that I realised that E-money made so much money from our business and left me a poor man begging for money.”
Investigations after E-money’s death revealed he amassed wealth.
Operatives of the Inspector-General of Police Intelligence Response Team to Abia, Imo and Enugu states, traced over 13 buildings including a hotel, belonging to the late kidnapper.
The police also recovered vehicles from several locations within the South-East which belonged to E-money.
