Ogbemudia farm: kidnappers' Den at Benin_Auchi road

By DADA AYOKHAI
Edo State is sitting on a keg of gunpowder and truly living up to its reputation as the "heartbeat of the nation", going by the rising rate of kidnapping and abductions in the state. 

A day hardly passes without tales of a heart- rending abduction executed against the ordinary citizens of the state by  a marauding group of kidnappers and abductors who have turned the state into a thriving kidnapping empire. 

 Both the ordinary citizens as well as the elites, who sojourn daily either to eke out a living or on transit to visit or touch base with their loved ones, nobody is spared of this dehumanising and vexatious plight. 

Edo State seems completely under siege. These rampaging kidnappers or abductors and some of their local collaborators, holds the state at the jugular. Of all the South-South geo-political states, Edo State is beginning to occupies pole position as number one den of kidnappers. 

The Fulani herders are brazen and have even taken " full control " of some of the major motorways in the state. They are said to be the masterminds and chief executioners of the abduction business. 

One of the no - go areas where these abductors are said to enjoy complete dominance is the popular Benin - Auchi road. Citizens are often car jacked and  taken into "custody" pending the payment of a huge ransom by their families and relatives.

Of particular note is the place called "Ogbemudia Farm", a palm plantation very close to a village called  iguovbiobo in Uhunmwode local government of the state.

Though the place still bears the name of its former owner, sources, however, disclosed that the plantation was owned by the late Brig Samuel Ogbemudia (retd), a former governor of the state, who later sold it to late Chief Anthony Anenih, a one time national leader of the PDP. 

The abandoned oil palm plantation is, however, being put to sinister use by the evil minded herders who subject travellers to a nightmarish experience on the road. 

Some of the treatments meted out to those " captured" on that spot is better  imagined. Several of the victims have either been raped, tortured or subjected to different forms of dehumanisation.  

The irony is that the kidnappers brazenly "capture" their victims   in broad daylight. 

And, to make matters worse, they are often heavily armed, wielding AK- 47 rifles and thereby leave their victims with no option than to submit. 

Their modus operandi is something else; they invade the road, shoot sporadically to create panic and fear  in their potential victims and then seize their victims, notwithstanding if they rode in a private or commercial vehicle and disappear into the plantation without molestation. 

The worst scenario that can happen to a traveller is for one's vehicle to break down on the spot at night. This is akin to voluntary submission of self to kidnapping. 

In spite of the presence of the police and, sometimes, soldiers, on this busy motorway, these band of daring kidnappers are not in anyway deterred.  

Most motorways that  traverse the state have become the den of these notorious kidnappers.  

As a result of this pathetic situation, most concerned travellers are wary of reaching their safely getting to one's travel, even as the state government grapples with steps on how to tame the menace

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