The Police in Lagos on Wednesday paraded two suspects in the murder of Cynthia Akuzogwu Udoka, daughter of a retired General.
One of the suspects, Ezekiel Nnechuwu Olisa Eloka, 23, told the police that they killed Cynthia because they believed she had a lot of money. But after taking her life, they did not find any significant amount of cash.
Both Eloka and Echezona Nwabufor, said they met the victim on Facebook and invited her to come to Lagos to buy goods at cheap prices.
“When she got to Lagos, we took her to a hotel in Festac. We thought she had a lot of money, but she said she didn’t have any money. We put a drug in her Ribena drink. After this, we slept with her for 12 hours in that hotel. We discovered that the tablet did not work quickly on her.
“We then attacked her, tied her up and used cellotape to cover her mouth. After that, we beat her to tell us where she kept the money.”
“When we didn’t get any money from her, we tied her mouth and strangled her and then we abandoned her in the hotel and fled.”
The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Umar Abubakar Manko, briefing journalists on how police were able to arrest the suspects, said detectives made use of the close circuit television at the hotel where the crime was committed to identify them.
The Area Commander, Area ‘E’ Police Command, ACP Okoro added that the suspects who are undergraduates of Nigerian universities were nabbed through the call logs of the telephone conversations they had with the victim who was a post graduate student of Nasarawa State University.
The police said that when the suspected killers strangled Cynthia, they called the hotel reception to inform them that there was a corpse in one of the rooms in the hotel. The management of the hotel subsequently deposited her corpse at the mortuary of Isolo General Hospital in Lagos.
ACP Okoro stated that many ATM cards, about 23 SIM cards, different identity cards were recovered from the suspects.
Police sources said the two suspects will soon be arraigned in court to answer a charge of murder.