After ransacking all likely places, including relatives’ houses, he resigned to fate and reported the case to the police. At around 5:30 pm on same day while he was coming back from the police station, his phone rang, and he answered. A strange voice asked whether he was Malami Jibrin, which he answered in the affirmative. He was also asked whether he has a daughter bearing A’isha, and he replied yes.
As the conversation over the phone continued, the caller identified himself as the kidnapper of A’isha and they are calling from Ikeja, Lagos and demanding a ransom of the sum of N3 million before his daughter could be released to him. “I concluded that was the end of it all because I do not know where to get that kind of money. In fact I can only hear of such amount while listening to Radio,” he said. The caller then hung up.
When it became apparently clear to the kidnappers that they had only succeeded in wasting their time by targeting a family which could not afford a ransom, they set their quarry free. At about 9:00 pm the following day, little A’isha was found on the streets of New GRA, along Gabukka area, crying, begging for help. Some good Samaritans came to her aid by taking her to the nearby house of the ward head of Gabukka village from where her parents were traced.
Mallam Jibril believed that the so-called kidnappers must have got his number through the series of announcements made on the state-owned radio and made use of it to call him for their demands. The Police Public Relation Officer of the state command, DSP Abdullahi Kamba confirmed the incident, saying investigation into the matter was in progress.
