How Rejected Suitor Allegedly Kidnapped Bride After Wedding in Lagos

A 19-year-old trader, Fatima Audu, who recently got married in Lagos, has recounted how she was allegedly attacked with acid and later kidnapped by a young man identified as Mohammed for turning down his marriage proposal.

According to Punch, the young lady who is now lying low out of fear for her life said:

“I know Mohammed but I did not know much about his personal life. He is from Maiduguri in Borno State.  We were friends and he always told me he wanted to marry me. But I always turned him down. We parted ways and I did not see him for a while. I had even forgotten about him.”

However, Mohammed still nursed pains over her rejection, and on Wednesday, March 30, three days to Audu’s wedding, executed an acid attack.

Audu said,

“I went down the street to buy something around 9pm (around her mother’s house) that day and while standing there, I saw a motorcycle approach with a passenger at the back. I saw one of the two young men on the motorcycle holding a cup as they stopped beside me. I did not think much of it. I just thought he was holding a cup of tea.

One of them then asked me if I was Fatima, I turned and said yes. He said, ‘Someone sent me to you.’ I asked him who and he did not answer, he just poured the content of the cup on me.

But as he raised the cup to pour it, I quickly turned my face and the content poured on my arm. I thought he had poured hot tea on me. The worst I could think of was hot water.

I did not know what it was but I started feeling the burns. It was when I got to the hospital that I realised that the man on the motorcycle had poured acid on me.”

Audu sustained some nasty burn injuries on her right arm, but Mohammed had just started with her. He called her phone that night and her sister-in-law, who was with the phone said the caller asked, “Do you know who attacked you last night?” thinking that he was talking to Audu.

Audu continued,

“The caller said that the attack was just the beginning. I got married as scheduled but after the wedding, the calls continued. The same caller continued to call with anonymous numbers, threatening me for marrying my husband.

He said he would come for me and kill me. Then on Monday April 25, I got a call from another anonymous caller, this time it was not from the voice I recognised. The person said he was my husband’s relation; he said he had been trying to call my husband but his number was not going through. The caller said two of them were on their way to our house to visit us.

I called my husband who was away at work at the time but his number did not go through truly. I then called my own family and they said if the callers actually said they were my husband’s relations, I should welcome them and entertain them.”

Unfortunately, she let the strangers in into her new home and as she set water and refreshment before them, one of them brought out a knife and a lighter and told her to cooperate.

They then informed her that someone had sent them to bring her. The strangers said they had been instructed to kill her if she raised the alarm. Frightened, she was whisked into a waiting white Golf car parked outside.

She added,

“They took me to Ikeja. I remember seeing the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital. We went past it and turned left into a street, where they kept me in an uncompleted building around 7pm that day.

They said they would kill me there and I began to beg them. But they said the man who sent them would come soon. About one hour later, the man came. It was Mohammed.

He gave me my phone that they had collected earlier. I was told to call my family and apologise for my intention to leave my husband. I called my brother but while I was speaking with him and he was asking where I was, Mohammed snatched the phone. I began to beg him again and finally pleaded with him that I would do as he wished. I told him I would leave my husband.”

Audu said Mohammed and his goons later left her alone in the room and told her they were watching her. They then dared her to raise the alarm, threatening to cut her throat. She said they left her to sleep till morning.

The following day, assured that she would leave her husband, her phone was given back to her and was released. Mohammed however threatened to come after her if she told anybody his identity or failed to leave her husband.

One of her siblings, whom she called, came to pick her at Ikeja bus stop, and till now, she has been unable to return  to her husband’s house in Oko-Oba Agege, where she was kidnapped.

The case has been reported to the police.