On Thursday, the Oyo State Police Command paraded 13 suspects, including three men accused of killing Rachael Opadele, a final-year student at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, and hotelier Olugbenga Owolabi, who was based in the United States.
Olugbenga was an American citizen who resided in Maryland. He came to Nigeria and built a hotel in his hometown, Ogbomoso. The hotel was opened in December 2021 but few months later (in July 2022) Olugbenga and a worker at his hotel, Rachael Opadele, were abducted and killed.
On October 1, his funeral service was held at Maryland’s Trinity Life Church.
The Commissioner of Police, Adebowale Williams, who paraded the suspects at the command headquarters in Eleyele, Ibadan, said the suspects also included killers of a police inspector and kidnappers of a former Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan, Professor Adigun Agbaje, on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, Adewale Osifeso, said the suspects were picked up at different locations in Oyo and Kwara states.
He said nemesis caught up with the suspected killers of the late hotelier while trying to collect a ransom of N10.7m from the family of another victim, Waheed Hammed.
He added it was later discovered that the money received from the victim were moved into the bank accounts of the three additional suspects for onward distribution to other members of the syndicate.