An Onitsha High Court in Anambra State, presided over by Justice Chudi Nwankwo on Thursday adjourned till Thursday, December 19,this year for the continuation of cross-examination of the Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of G.U.O.Motors Limited,Chief Godwin Okeke, the first prosecution witness, PW1in the on-going trial of three accused persons in connection with his kidnap on August 23,2009.at All Saints Anglican Church Cathedral, Onitsha.
The adjournment came after D. U. Nwafor, the counsel to the second accused, Ifeanyi Okafor, concluded his cross-examination on the complainant, Okeke and midway into the cross-examination of Okeke by Mrs. Chinelo Okongwu, counsel to Alexander Onyinanya, the third accused.
During the cross-examinations by both the second and third defence counsels, Okeke noted that it was very difficult to track his kidnappers down after the incident, to the extent that the third accused was arrested even two years after because he was into hiding.
“I made statements to the police ever before they were arrested and they were not arrested in one day. I limited my statements to the general attitude of quite a good number of the accused because I could not know their names one by one”, he stated.
On the date of his statements, Okeke declared: “I can’t remember the particular statement I made on each date and the exact date I made them or the exact date the second defendant was arrested. None of them was arrested at the scene of the crime because their weapons were so sophisticated that they kept firing for 30 minutes and I later heard that even the policemen at the nearby CPS and Area Command, Onitsha were locking up their gates for fear of being invaded by the kidnappers”.
When D. U. Nwafor asked him whether he acted as a pointer to the accused, Okeke replied: “I did not act as their pointer when they were arrested, rather, the police invited me to identified them which I did and most of them in the charge sheet in Charge No. MO/179c/2010 were identified by myself on the particular date they were arrested by the police”.
“Before my kidnap, he continued, I can’t remember knowing the accused, except the third defendant who served in my village at Adazi-Ani as a member of the vigilante group.
He worked in my village for about a year before he was redeployed at my own request because of his flamboyant life style and as at the time I was kidnapped, he was no longer with me but he was still hanging around my village”. .
I am not aware if there was any previous criminal charge against the third defendant but I learnt he ran away from South Africa for one reason or the other best known to him even in my statement, I did say that only two of my kidnappers covered their faces with masks while I was with them in their hideouts.
He further replied: “I made a statement of suspicion to his employer and leader of the vigilante group but I made a general statement to the police in Onitsha before their arrests and after their arrests, I made other statements to the police but I don’t have their dates off-head”.
On why his statements to the police were not elaborate as to mention the name of the third accused in any of those statements, Okeke replied the third defence counsel, Mrs. Chinelo Okongwu thus: “Even as at January 2010 when I made statement to the police, I was still in shock but now that it is four years after my kidnap and torture, I rely more on my evidence-in-chief in this court because they are more detailed now that I am more composed than then”..
According to him, “One of the kidnappers, Emeka Eze who had jumped bail, made in his statement to the police that they collected N38 million as ransom from my family, but my wife told me it was N30 million she gave out to them”.
He continued: “The confessional statement of Emeka Eze on how they shared my ransom money was televised in national televisions for people to hear, Some of my kidnappers are still on the run and I pray that I catch them tomorrow and still bring them to court.
The third defendant had been on the run for upward of two years before he was arrested in 2011 because his employer made every frantic efforts to track him down but he kept running away until his arrest”.
