A four-year-old boy, Hamod Adeniran, has been rescued from three men, who allegedly lured him out of his mother’s shop and abducted him in the Arepo area of Ogun State.

PUNCH Metro gathered that the kidnappers were about to board a bus with Hamod at the Arepo bus stop on Friday, when some persons, who knew the boy’s parents, accosted them and demanded where they were going with him.

One of the suspects was said to have claimed that Hamod was his son.

It was learnt that one of the people, who knew Hamod’s parents, quickly alerted his mother, Nimota, who rushed to the bus stop to claim her child.

Hamod’s father, who was near the bus stop when people were shouting and accusing the men of attempting to kidnap Hamod, said he got to know that it was his son when he moved near the scene of the commotion to observe what was going on.

The Oyo State indigene said, “I got to my wife’s shop on Friday around 5pm to check on her and my children and I saw my son, Hamod, with her. Later, I left the shop for my office at the Tipper Garage in Arepo, but about 40 minutes later, I started hearing people shouting that three Hausa men had kidnapped a child at the Arepo bus stop.

“I was at the garage then but never knew that my son was the victim. It was when I stood up and moved closer to observe what was happening that I discovered that the victim was Hamod.

“I saw people, who knew him as my son, and what I was told was that one of the three men claimed that Hamod was his son and that they wanted to board a vehicle going to the North. It was in the process of the argument that my wife met us there and said she and Hamod just finished eating and that she went to the back of her shop to wash her hands when the men took him away.

“When she came back, a fellow trader asked after Hamod, but she could not find him where he usually plays and it was at that point that she was called that Hamod was seen with three men from the North at the bus stop. People were already beating the men, but I cautioned them, because I didn’t want us to take the law into our own hands.

“We quickly informed the police and the suspects were arrested. I want the government to prosecute them in accordance with the law, because if they had boarded a vehicle with my son, efforts to locate him would have proved abortive.”

The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Abimbola Oyeyemi, in a statement on Sunday, identified the suspects as Abubakar Saidu, Danladi Abdulkarim and Abdullah Idris, adding that they claimed to hail from Jigawa State.

He stated that Hamod was reunited with his parents, adding that the Commissioner of Police, Kenneth Ebrimson, advised parents to take the security and well-being of their children seriously to avert a reoccurrence of such an incident.

Oyeyemi said, “The arrest of the suspects followed a complaint by the mother of the child, Nimota, who reported at the Warewa Police Station that she was alerted by one of her neighbours that her son was sighted with three strangers at the Arepo bus stop along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, where they were waiting to board a vehicle to an unknown destination.

“Upon the information, she started looking for her son, only to discover that he was no longer where he left him. On the strength of the report, the Divisional Police Officer, Warewa Division, SP Folake Afeniforo, quickly mobilised a team of policemen and raced to the bus stop, where the men were waiting to board a vehicle.

“On getting there, the team met the three men with the child in their possession and they were promptly arrested with the help of members of the public. During interrogation, the three suspects, who claimed to have come from Jigawa State, could not give any reasonable account of why the child was seen with them or why they wanted to board a commercial bus with the child.

“The child has been reunited with his parents, while the suspects are undergoing interrogation and based on the order of the CP, Kenneth Ebrimson, have been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department for discreet investigation and possible prosecution.”