The Nigeria Police Force on Wednesday paraded a 43-year-old man suspected to have made scary threats asking former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to either withdraw from the 2019 presidential race or have his plane blown up mid-air.

According to police spokesman, Jimoh Moshood, an Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police, the suspect named Augustus Akpan allegedly used a stolen phone to explicitly threaten wife and daughters of the former Vice President with rape.

Akpan who hails from Edemaya village, Ikot Abasi LGA, Akwa Ibom State was arrested while fleeing to Lagos was also said to have extorted huge sums of Naira and foreign currencies from unnamed high profile citizens, with false claims of being a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) operative.

The police spokesman further said that the suspect who speaks fluent English, Ibibio, Russian and Portuguese languages is to remain in police custody until investigations are concluded and he is arraigned in court.

“On the receipt of complaint of threat and intimidation from former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, GCON, the forty-three years old Augustus Akpan was trailed and eventually arrested by the IGP Intelligence Response Team.

“The suspect, Augustus Akpan was arrested at toll-gate along Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Lagos State, while on the run to escape arrest; during interrogation, he confessed to the crime and admitted that he resorted to the threat and intimidation when all efforts to extort money from the former Vice President were unsuccessful.

“The suspect, Augustus Akpan also admitted in his confessional statement that he is a professional fraudster and not working for any political party, that his mention that ‘Let Buhari run against your against your PDP members’ in his threat message to the former Vice President was merely to divert attention.

“The suspect is fluent in English, Ibibio, Russian and Portuguese languages respectively; the phone and the SIM card he used for the threat and intimidation were recovered from him and were discovered to have been robbed by him from a lady (name withheld) who identified him as the person that robbed her few months back.

“The suspect, Augustus Akpan further confessed that he had threatened, defrauded and extorted huge sum of money in Naira and foreign currency from so many prominent personalities and their family members while posing as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent,” Jimoh Moshood stated.

•Excerpted from The Nation report

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