Officers of the Nigeria police have found the mutilated corpse of Chief Ignatius Adunukwe, the Nigerian billionaire and owner of Fireman Generator company who was kidnapped on December 1, last year.
The decomposed body was recovered in a canal at Ogunbo Forest, off Ajah Road, Lagos, Nigeria. His remains were later taken to Havana hospital, Surulere.
The businessman, who has businesses and properties in different states in Nigeria, was lured by his kidnappers who posed as real estate agents interested in buying a property from him.
The Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) in charge of Zone 2 Command, Onikan on Tuesday visited the site where the body was found, accompanied by journalists.
Mr Illiyasu said Mr Adunukwe was brutally murdered by a syndicate who trailed him via his Facebook page.
“Their despicable conduct connotes a high level of wickedness, hinged on abysmal loss of moral values,” he said.
The victim, who was into estate development and gold mining, posted on his Facebook page sometime in 2019 that he had a property for sale in Abuja worth N900 million.
Mr Iliyasu said the family reported the disappearance of Mr Adunukwe to the AIG’s office, who ordered officers to rescue the victim and arrest the abductors, unknown to them that he had been killed on the same day.
The suspects in custody are Bob Ibeaji, 42; Arinze Igwe, 26, Solomon Cletus, 30; and Israel Obigaremu, 35.
Mr Ibeaji was said to have injected the victim with a lethal substance, while another member of the gang hit him with an axe on the back of his head, leaving him unconscious.
The police further said they immediately dragged the victim into a toilet and strangled him to death.
IG Obiodunukwe, as he was popularly called, was missing for weeks, having been kidnapped last December. His decomposing body was found on Thursday, January 16, 2020, after his kidnappers were caught and they led police officers to the location where they dumped the body.
How he was killed:
The billionaire who hails from Oraukwu in Anambra State was last seen when he went to seal a land deal with his murderers who posed as real estate buyers interested in one of his properties.
After negotiations, both parties agreed on a price and the agreement was drafted by IG Odunukwe’s lawyers. His lawyers suggested going with him to sign the papers but he declined, explaining that he also had to stop by at Ikoyi club before meeting the land buyers.
He went to Ikoyi club and reportedly played tennis for a while before leaving to meet the “buyers”. That was the last time he was seen.
When he didn’t return home, his family started looking for him. His vehicle was found in the premises of the hotel where he agreed to meet with the buyers but the hotel management said he didn’t enter inside the hotel building and their CCTV covers only the inside of the hotel.
His family reported the incident to the Assistant Inspector General of Police and they commenced investigations.
They succeeded in arresting one of the culprits but he denied knowledge of the incident. When the police went to his house, they found IG Odunukwe’s property documents which had been signed. The man insisted that he already concluded the business deal with Chief Odunukwe and paid for the property.
However, when the police asked him for the account number where he made payments, he claimed he paid with gold.
He was detained and interrogated and two other suspects were arrested. They confessed that they picked IG Odunukwe and forced him to sign the documents, after which they killed him.
The suspects who identified themselves as Arinze, Solomon, Cletus and Daniel Ibeaju took the police to the forest where they dumped the body in Ajah and they took turns to confirm that the body in the bag belongs to the missing businessman.
