Girl, 15, Abducted on Her Way to Write UTME in Lagos

A 15-year-old girl, Rita Clement, was on Thursday abducted on her way to sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination in the Agidingbi, Ikeja area of Lagos. Rita who lives in the Ojodu Berger area had reportedly left her home around 5:30am for the exam which was slated for 6:30am.

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

She wrote, “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.”

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The matter was subsequently reported at the Ojodu Police Division on Friday.

Clement’s uncle, Emeka Orazulike, who showed Punch correspondent the text message, said,

“Rita (Clement) 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.

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

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 that her phone rang on Thursday when they called her but had been switched off by Friday.

We hope Clement is rescued in earnest.