Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
A Chief Magistrates’ Court in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State yesterday sentenced Olawusi Victor, 18, and Idris Mary, 20, to two weeks community service for fake kidnap.
Mary went to visit her boyfriend, Victor, and called her mother, saying that she had been kidnapped.
Chief Magistrate Adefunke Anoma in her pronouncement said: “This again is sadly a sign of high moral decadence in the fabric of our society.”
Anoma also recommended two weeks counseling exercise for both of them to be supervised by the court Registrar.
She frowned at Mary’s action, for a girl of her age, who is writing an international examination, to leave the comfort of her home and go to stay at a guesthouse for four days.
Mary explained that she went to her boyfriend at Akure for fun but lack of transport fare to Ado-Ekiti made her send the alarming message of kidnapping to her parents.
The prosecutor, Monica Ikebulo, told the court that “the act was committed on August 9, when they conducted themselves in a manner likely to cause breach of peace by concealing their whereabouts and thereby demanded ransom from Mary’s parent, claiming that she had been kidnapped.”