15-year-old girl abducted on her way to UTME

A 15-year-old girl, Rita Clement was abducted by unknown people last Thursday while on her way to the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination at Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos State.

Rita's family members have expressed how they have not known peace of mind since the incident.

According to PUNCH Metro, Rita, who lived with her relatives on Gboyega Kilo Street, Ojodu Berger area, and had UTME registration number 65061660GJ, left home about 5.30am was to sit for the exam at 6.30am on that day.

The PUNCH Metro correspondent who obtained the girl's examination printout, gathered that the examination
centre was the West African Examination Council, International office on Plot B, Lateef Jakande Road, Agidingbi, Lagos.

At about 5pm, the girl sent a text message to her mother’s mobile phone, raising the alarm that she had been abducted and she did not know the location where she was taken to.

The matter was said to have been reported at the Ojodu Police Division on Friday and had been transferred to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Ikeja.

In the text message which Rita's uncle, Emeka Orazulike, showed Punch, the teenager wrote that the abductors had seized her phone since morning and she only managed to write a text through someone’s assistance.

The text read:
 “Mummy, they took my phone and beat me up inside the bus. Mummy, I don’t know where they took me to. They made me sleep and said they will kill me if I ran. Someone gave me my phone, saying I must return it before they came back. Mummy, please save me, please.”

The uncle, who worked as a pharmacist, said it was through the text message that the family got to know that Rita was not missing, but abducted.

 The girl's uncle said “Rita finished from a college on Aina Street in the Ojodu area. She just concluded her SSCE; we then enrolled her for the UTME. Her father lives in Enugu.

“The examinations board gave her that Thursday, by 6.30am, to sit for her exam. She was to sit at a centre in the Agidingbi area. On that day, as I was preparing for work around 6am, she met and told me that she was set to leave for the venue.

“I gave her N1,000 when she told me the centre was at Agidingbi. She would use only N100 for transport. I then left for work.

“As I was coming back around 6.30pm, her mother called that she forwarded a message to my telephone. I then checked my phone and saw the scary message. I first went to the Area F Command, Ikeja, and was about making a statement when the Area Commander directed me to the Ojodu Police Division.

“We reported the matter on Friday at Ojodu, and the police there radioed other stations.”

Orazulike added that when they called the girl’s phone, it rang out on Thursday, adding that it had been switched off by Friday.

“She did sit for that exam. The abductors might have whisked her away in the bus she boarded on that morning. She was used to going out. When she wrote her WAEC, her centre was at Giwa Oke Aro, Agbado. She went there with her friends.

“That was why when she mentioned that she was going to Agidingbi for the UTME, I did not nurse any fear because it was just two bus stops from our area. If we knew that anything would happen, I would have taken her there myself,” he added.

The Divisional Police Officer in Ojodu took the family members to SARS office, Ikeja, on Monday and SARS commander assured them that he would detail his men to rescue the girl.

However, the family is yet to hear from the police as of Wednesday.

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Dolapo Badmos, has not replied to a text message sent to her phone on the abduction by Punch.