‘We Were Paid N150,000 To Kill School Proprietor'

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The Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Ikeja, Lagos, has arrested three men, who claimed they were contracted to kill a 65-year-old school proprietress, Mrs. Veronica Okenido, A police source told Saturday PUNCH on Friday that the leader of the gang was 25-year-old Jude Ekpenisi, who confessed that were paid by an undisclosed person to assassinate the woman.

According to a statement Jude made, they pitied Okenido because she is a Christian.

“We had compassion on the woman and rejected the N150,000 we were offered but asked the woman to pay us off with the same amount,” the suspect said.

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The other two suspects are Jude’s brother, 22-year-old David, and Philemon Uwadi, also 22.

After a report was made to the police, the officer-in-charge, SARS, Superintendent of Police Abba Kyari, tracked down the gang leader through his brother’s phone line.

Our source said, “Jude was arrested after he was lured out by a promise of a lucrative employment in a big church. A SARS operative posed as the pastor.

“The third suspect, Uwadi, reported at the SARS Scorpion Building by himself not knowing that Jude had been arrested in connection with the assassination attempt they had abandoned because their victim was not cooperating.”

David was arrested when he went to visit his brother at SARS office.

Jude said his house shares a fence with Okenido’s school and that the woman even knew him but had no idea he was the one who planned the kidnap.

The spokesperson for the Lagos State Police Command, Ngozi Braide, was not available for comment as she was said to have travelled.