Suspected billionaire kidnapper, Chukwumeme Onwuamadike aka Evans, seems to be a chameleon. While controlling the kidnapping world, he kept changing at will to beat policemen tracking him.
Evans used a different name in each state of the federation to create varied identities.
It has also been discovered that in 2013, Evans was issued with a Ghanaian passport with a fictitious name.
The Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, disclosed this while speaking at the West Africa International Security Conference in Accra, Ghana, in a paper entitled: “The role of Nigeria Police in national security and its contributions in West Africa.”
According to a document obtained by the Inspector-General of Police (IG) Intelligence Response Team (IRT), the Accra Passport office issued the passport in the name of Asare Nelson.
Officials of the Accra Passport Office allegedly connived with Evans to issue the passport on January 10, 2013 to expire in January 2018.
Evans was arrested while trying to drive out of his palatial Magodo residence on Saturday June 10.
The police discovered his Ghanaian passport in his house.
In living to his claims as the lord of kidnappers, Evans had told the IRT team of interrogators that he had a different name for different state of the federation.
For instance, the suspect is known at his Magodo residence as George but he is Evans in the Lagos criminal world.
“In Edo he is Sunny; in Port Harcourt, he is Richard; in Lagos he is Evans; in Anambra he is Somtu, etc, while some his girlfriends police arrested know him as Mike.
“Security agents in each state are looking for different persons whereas it is the same person. He was doing that just to outsmart security agents. He is extremely intelligent in crime matters,” a source said.
Speaking on Evans’ arrest, Idris said information sharing was crucial to tackling the menace of trans-border crimes in West Africa.
He said: “It is through such exchange that we were able to nab a Ghanaian/Nigerian kidnapper two weeks ago, after evading arrest for many years.
“For several years, Evans terrorised Nigerians and nationals of many countries across West Africa. Efforts to apprehend him did not yield the desired results until we spread our search net wider.”
The IG also urged the Ghanaian authorities to investigate how Evans got the Ghanaian passport.
He added: “Nigerians are celebrating the arrest of the Nigerian/Ghanaian kidnapper… because he has the Ghanaian passport… something you guys have to look at.”
Taking up the IG’s gauntlet, the Ghanaian North Tongu Member of Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, charged security agencies to move in quickly to arrest Evans’ accomplices in Ghana.
According to Ablakwa, the use of Ghanaian passport by Evans exposes the weaknesses in that country’s passport system.
He said: “For now, it is a case to do more with kidnapping and those loopholes in the passport system could be used by terrorists. So, they have to be identified and closed so that terrorists will not exploit that.”
