Kidnap Saga: Gloom envelopes Coker’s home - Lagos beefs up security around exco members

Kunle Awosiyan and Olalekan Olabulo, Lagos - 06.07.2008

SEQUEL to the kidnap on Friday of a son of Mr. Folorunso Coker, one of the aides of Governor Babatunde Fashola’the government Lagos State has beefed up security around its functionaries.

For instance, the number of security personnel in the convoy of the Deputy Governor, Princess Sarah Sosan, has been increased just as security around other officials of the state has become tighter.

However, the kidnap has sent jitters to members of the state executive as many of them on Saturday moved in their private cars and refused to pick calls.

While speaking on the kidnap on Saturday, Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Media, Mr. Akin Bello confirmed the kidnap but added that the police were on top of the issue and there was no cause for alarm.

According to him, the executive council was in a meeting for hours on Saturday to assess the situation, adding that the issue would be handled perfectly by the police.

However, the Police in Lagos on Saturday denied any knowledge of the kidnap. The Police in the state also denied the report that some officers of the command confirmed the reported kidnapping as claimed by some newspapers

The imagemaker of the State Police Command, Frank Mba, while speaking with Sunday Tribune, stated that the reported kidnapping of the child by the aide's driver was never reported with the police in the state

He, however, averred that since neither himself nor the commissioner of police in the state confirmed the story, the reported confirmation of the story by the Police in the state is unauthoritative.

At Coker’s home, No 42, Norman Williams Street, Ikoyi, the family was in sober mood on Saturday and refused to talk to journalists for security reasons.

They said that Fashola had directed the Police to take charge of the case. “ Therefore, we cannot speak with the press for the sake of the security of the child”.

While one of the reports had it that the driver took away the children while he had gone to pick them at the school, the other has it that the driver absconded with the children at a market where he had taken the children and their mother.

The driver allegedly left off the hook on one of the children and took away the two-year old boy to a place suspected to be outside the country, asking for 50 million naira ransom.