A middle aged man, Paul Yempe who claimed to be working for Rivers State Broadcasting Corporation (RSBC) was last Thursday paraded before journalists in Bayelsa State for falsely presenting himself before some officials of Bayelsa State Government as a Correspondent of Cable News Network (CNN).
Also paraded along with him are three persons believed to have masterminded the kidnapping of five workers early this week at Opuama.
The arrested suspects were identified as Izekemi Thomas, Desmond Sunday and Naomi Bassey. Bassey is identified as the girlfriend of the mastermind of the kidnapping,Inemor Worikuma-Lemec.
The security operation of the Anti-kidnapping squad,which was led by its commander identified as Chris,was assisted by a tracking device planted in the ransom bait handed the kidnappers for the Monday release of the abducted workers.
The kidnappers reportedly collected N6million ransom out of which the sum of N1.45m was recovered by the Police during the arrest.
It was gathered that though the initial plan by the security personnel was to track and arrest the kidnappers at the point of ransom collection,but the squad of the Nigerian Police tracked the kidnappers to the Sabageria community of Nembe Local Government Area of the State and arrested the two suspects with a share of the ransom.
According to the Commissioner of Police, Mr Hillary Opara, even though the command was not in support of the ransom, the company went ahead to pay but ” through our special device we were able to track them, we arrest led three including a girl while others escaped with their lots”.
Commenting on Yempe, Mr Opara said he presented himself to Commissioner for Energy, Mr Ikiogha Framcis as a Correspondent of CNN, who had came to the state to interview him on developmental stride of the state but when asked to produce evidence he quickly retracted the claim, saying he works for Radio Rivers as a Presenter but when he was search a fake CNN identification bearing name was recovered.
The Commissioner also paraded 19 other suspects for offenses ranging from pipeline vandalism, rape, piracy, robbery, kidnapping and and unlawful possession of fire arms.
He, however, solicited for public supports to enable security agency within the state perform to maximum satisfactions.
