Two Kids In Police Grips: What's Their Crime?

The crime of taking someone away by force and making them pay money in exchange for one's release is called kidnapping or abduction. Usually, the stranger or kidnapper might extort or elicit a ransom from the victim's parents for his/her return.

At ages 14 and 15, Aziz Imoro Guma and Charles Akolgo are fairly young. But the two have given their parents a rude awakening as they pulled a fast one on them over the weekend.

They kidnapped themselves!
On Saturday 22, June 2019, the Ghanaian teenagers faked they'd been kidnapped and demanded a ransom cash amount of GHc 200.

And who would have thought the duo would ever consider such an audacious plan?

Well, it starts from this-- nick bits and pieces from Momma. Steal bolts and nuts from Papa ('Ena dea meefa,Agya dea meefa'), claim to have a migraine or severe headache, fake school bills to get monies from parents etc..And it graduates to a level where it would cost states and governments a fortune to fight it.

More often than not, it appears most parents and guardians don't see these tell-tale signs. However, some do... Some see the approaching menace but they tend to ignore it.

Albert Einstein says: "The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything."

Bolga lads in fake kidnapping?
It seems a bit incredulous isn't it?
But that's the reality. Crime is crawling everywhere in our part of the region today.

Big cities are taking big hits and the small towns are following suit gingerly.

Definitely, something is wrong.
Is society failing its social responsibility?
Are parents shirking their parenting or parental responsibility too? Could recent spate of kidnappings in the country be a contributing factor? How about peer pressure?

Or perhaps these kids have been exposed to some media materials i.e movies, magazines, YouTube etc? What's gone wrong?

The plot
According to the police report, the two kids who reside within the Bolgatanga Municipality of the Upper East Region faked their kidnap to elicit a ransom. For instance, Akolga Charles demanded GH¢200 from his parents to settle a soccer bet game debt.

The report says, the 15-year-old who is a student of the Sacred Heart Junior High school called her mother Akolgo Azerebisa on phone at about 11:37am last Saturday and disclosed that he'd been kidnapped by an unknown person who was demanding the said amount before he would be released.

Per the development, a formal complaint was lodged and Police negotiated with the alleged kidnapper over the payment of the ransom in other to track the name of the mobile money number given to the mother to deposit the money into.

When Police checked the name, the boy’s mother name appeared on the mobile money account. This raised suspicion that the boy might"ve staged his own abduction and as a result the ransom was paid to track him.

Subsequently, he was arrested upon getting home on Sunday June 23, 2019, according to police.

Upon interrogation, he confessed that he needed money to settle a debt of soccer bet game and since the mother would not agree to give him money to pay for the debt, he lied to the mother through a different MTN SIM card which her mother was not aware and through the assistance of magic voice software on his Techno phone he called the mother and lied to her that he has been kidnapped inside an uncompleted house at Yorogo.

The cash amount of GH¢120 out of the GH¢200 was retrieved and the suspect in police custody assisting with investigations.

On his part, Aziz Imoro Gumah the 14- year-old boy who also claimed he was kidnapped by unknown persons but was later found swimming in a local dam has also been arrested.

Aziz had gone missing for days and a local radio station made announcements for the public to assist in finding his whereabouts.

But in a sudden twist of events luck evaded him as he was spotted swimming in a dam located behind the Bolgatanga Polytechnic by two of his brothers.