Kidnap saga: Yobo’s agent uninformed

By Wale Emosu, Online Editor - 13.07.2008

LAST Thursday, our sister publication, the Nigerian Tribune published a story on the demand by a group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping of Nornu, elder brother of Super Eagles player, Joseph Yobo, based on an e-mail sent to the paper.

Nornu was kidnapped in Port Harcourt penultimate Saturday and in the mail sent to the central e-mail box of the Nigerian Tribune (editornigeriantribune@yahoo.com) at 11:42 AM last Wednesday by MATIAPH Group, the group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping, it demanded the ransom of $10,000 e-gold before Nornu could be released.

The story generated a lot of reactions and it becomes expedient at this point for the record to be set straight because of a particular reaction – that of John Shittu – which KickOffNigeria.com cast on its web site on Thursday and which was subsequently published by some print media.

Shittu, who is the agent of Yobo Joseph (brother to Nornu) had told KickOffNigeria.com: “Between you and me, the family has received no ransom demand from any group, and reports like this can endanger the young man's life…We do not know where The Tribune got their story from but I can tell you that it is false.”

It's either Mr. Shittu has problems with semantics; he was only told about the story (in which case he never read the story), or he was only trying to be mischievous, because nowhere in the story was it said that the Yobo family had received ransom demand from any group; our own story was written within the context of the letter sent to us; it never went out of it.

For the avoidance of doubt, we hereby produce below a scanned copy of the e-mail sent to the Nigerian Tribune by the MATIAPH Group. This way, we believe, Mr. Shittu's curiosity as to where we got our story will be satisfied before the entire public.

“It was the Tribune's belief (and it is still is) that publishing the story even when we were asked not to would be of help to the security agencies handling the case,” stated the paper's Associate Editor (Sports) Ade Somefun.

He wonders why a man like Mr. Shittu could have been “so careless” in his reaction. “I expect a man of Mr. Shittu’s calibre to know better. I’m highly disappointed in him,” Mr. Somefun said. “We want to reiterate that the Tribune titles stand for the truth and people like Mr. Shittu should always mind how they react to stories published in the papers because nobody can cast aspersions on the truth.”