CrimeInside Nigeria
Nude Photos: Salawa Abeni’s Blackmailer in RRS Net
...I just wanted some money, the 19-year-old suspect confesses
A 19-year-old National Diploma holder of the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, has been arrested by men of Rapid Response Squad, Lagos State Police Command, for allegedly plotting to blackmail Waka music queen, Alhaja Salawa Abeni.
After trailing the suspect, Olufowoke Emmanuel, a resident of Ogun State, for three days, the efforts of the RRS paid off last Thursday.
Salawa Abeni had, not too long ago, gone to social media to alert the world of the threat by the suspect to blackmail her by threatening to publish her nude pictures on internet.
To back her claim, the popular artiste posted her WhatsApp conversation with the suspect and the purported old photos he planned to use for the blackmail.
According to the Punch newspaper, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Hakeem Odumosu, was said to have directed the Commander, RRS, Mr. Olatunji Disu, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, to get the blackmailer into the net.
Though the police traced Emmanuel and kept him on the radar, they could not pounce on him owing to the spiraling prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After his eventual arrest, the suspect, an electrical engineering National Diploma graduate, allegedly confessed to the crime, stating that he merely wanted to extort money from the artiste.
He allegedly said he saw the nude pictures in a memory card he picked from the floor in YABATECH in November 2019. And that after downloading the photographs on his phone, he said he got Salawa Abeni’s mobile number from her Instagram page.
“On 1st of April, 2020, I chatted her up and also called her after sending a few of the photos to her online,” Emmanuel said.
“My intention was to negotiate with her for a few bucks 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 even cursed the blackmailer unknown to her that I was the one behind it.
“I immediately sneaked out, destroyed the memory card, and threw my mobile phone and SIM card into a nearby wetland in Magboro.
“Since then, I never mentioned it to anyone and called Madam Salawa Abeni about it again.”
