The police in Lagos have arrested a 19-year-old National Diploma Electrical Engineering student of Yaba College of Technology, for allegedly blackmailing a female fuji musician, Queen Salawa Abeni, with nude photographs.
The Commander of the Rapid Response Squad (RRS), DCP Olatunji Disu, who confirmed the arrest to HumAngle on Sunday and named the suspect as Emmanuel Olufowoke.
Disu said the suspect was arrested by the decoy team of RRS on Thursday after three days of monitoring him.
He said the Commissioner of police in Lagos, Mr Hakeem Odumosu, got a complaint of an attempt by an unknown individual to blackmail the musician sometime in April, 2020.
The commander said the commissioner of police directed him to fish out the suspect, stressing that after a technical diagnosis of the complaint, his team narrowed down on the suspect few days later.
He said that they could not arrest the suspect in time due to the prevalence of COVID-19.
Disu said that the suspect confessed to have been the mastermind behind the ploy to publish some nude pictures of the musician in exchange for money, stressing that he was alone in the scheme.
HumAngle gathered that the suspect claimed in his statement to the police that he saw the nude pictures in a memory card which he picked up on the floor in his school sometime in November, 2019.
He confessed that after downloading the nude photographs of the musician on his phone, he picked up her mobile number from her Instagram page.
“On 1st of April, 2020, I chatted her up and also called her after sending few of the photos to her online.”
“My intention was to negotiate with her for few cash and for me to destroy the photographs.”
“I thought everything was going on fine until the following day when I heard the news of the blackmail over the radio.”
“I was with my mother. She was even cursing the blackmailer unknown to her that I was the brain behind it.”
“I immediately sneaked out, destroyed the memory card and threw my mobile phone and SIM card into nearby wetland in Magboro.”
“Since then, I never mentioned it to anyone and called Madam Salawa Abeni about it again,” a source quoted the suspect as saying.
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