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Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Chief Olu Falae, yesterday admitted the payment of ransom to the Fulani herdsmen who kidnapped him for 72 hours. A dependable source said that N5 million was paid as ransom before the former Minister for Finance was released last week Thursday. Chief Falae, who received the former Chief of Defence Staff, General Alani Akinrinade in his residence in Akure, however, did not say the exact amount paid to the kidnappers.

Speaking with newsmen during the visit of Akinrinade, Chief Falae said his abductors threatened to kill him every 30 minutes until they received information that money had been given to them as demanded. He said: “There were six of them with three or four guns and every half an hour or so, they will say, ‘Baba we are going to kill you if you don’t give us money. We are going to kill you.’

“On Wednesday, one of them came and said, ‘look we are going to leave here on Thursday morning. Since we cannot leave you here alone, if we don’t get what we want, we are going to kill you.’  And they said they gave me until 3pm and if at 3pm they don’t get the money that they would execute me. I thank God that at 21 minutes to  3pm, one of them came and said, ‘the money don complete.”

Explaining how he was abducted, the former minister said: “When the hoodlums came, they slashed me with their cutlasses, they said I was not cooperating. And they dragged me barefooted into the bush. After dragging me around for about two hours, they stopped somewhere for us to rest and there they asked me to phone my wife and tell her that I have been kidnapped and taken out of Ondo State by car which was a lie. It was about 2.30pm on Monday we started walking with very few stops until 2am the following morning. I suspect that I must have covered a minimum of 15km. That morning I did not take anything. So all day, I had no food, no water and I walked close to 15km. How I survived I cannot really remember. I had no food in my stomach, I had no shoes, my clothes were torn to shreds.

"At some point, one of them gave me rubber slippers. We walked until about 2am. At some point, they called for an okada. At about 2.30am, the okada man took me away and I had no clue where we were going. Finally, they dumped me somewhere. We stayed there until I was released on Thursday. In that place, we all slept on bare ground, unfortunately, the rain came in the night and I was thoroughly drenched where I was lying down. One of them brought a small umbrella to cover my head, my head was covered, but the rest of my body was not covered.

“They offered me bread, but I told them I cannot eat it. I demanded for a bottle of coke, which was what I drank everyday to have the strength to survive and to continue the march, because they were permanently moving. They were changing locations at two to three times a day. I suspect because they did not want the police to succeed in tracing them.”