Nigeria’s Richest Kidnapper? The Evans Story (Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike)

0:06 Hello, thank you for joining me on this episode of Mysteries. Nigel, I really don't know how to start this episode because I tried a couple of intros and none of them felt right because I'd keep thinking but what if this was me? How would my family members react because I don't trust them enough to follow instructions and rescue me. Today we're talking about kidnapping and it's a very scary topic, something that scares us just thinking about it. Before I get into it, first disclaimer, this episode covers real life kidnappings, violence and crime.

0:46 Listener discretion and strongly advised. Today we're talking about the kidnapper. Sorry, real quick heads up, I have serious speech impediment. I have been trying to physically prep myself for this episode. I have been home alone for the past few days. Can you tell from my voice that I've been secluded? I literally feel so chill. Not the kind of chill that comes with total silence. I have been home alone for a few days now and I have not spoken to anyone physically for a few days. That's affecting my speech because for the past few days I've been like sitting in front of my desk doing what I do.

1:31 Hours would go by and I'd be like, damn, I haven't said a word in a few hours. Please do understand. Thank you so much. Today we're talking about, like I said, the kidnapper. His real name is Jiggudi Dumame, but he's popularly known by the alias Ivans, and that's just one of his many aliases. I usually would prefer to start every case with back story, you know, especially of the people involved, like the main suspects for one. I always try my best to get many information about them as possible. Information like their age, date of birth and were they were born, childhood, if there were any traumatic events, possible life events leading up to their crimes.

2:19 Unlike the cases in other parts of the world where everything is properly documented from their early childhood to any significant traumatic events growing up, series of life events leading up to their crimes. It's very hard to get full dive full detail about people in cases like this. So for one, I don't even have Yvonne's birthday to tell you. Any information about his childhood that I have is from the wife's accounts of things he told her. I would say do your own research. You'll probably not find anything but you might be lucky.

2:55 You might look in places I didn't or didn't know to look, so you might find more information if you want to. I personally will take everything she said at as this because I don't see why she would lie. You can choose to take what she says with a grain of salt or fully believe her, or do your own research. I'll leave that up to you. Not knowing when he was born. We do know that he was from our polygamous family. His father married three wives and when he was 60 years old, his father drove him and his mother out of the house like asked them to leave the home.

3:31 The wife said he believed that the wife was being influenced by one of his wives. Maybe one of them had a vendetta with his mother and one of the mother out of the family home and was able to convince his father to drive him in his his mom away. So he leaves with the mom at the age of 6 and had to stay with people they knew from friends to family members and people like that. His mother took him to go stay with his grandmother. So he was raised by his grandmother until he became an adult and started his life.

4:06 Whatever I say about his childhood or events from his wife, when he becomes an adult, he meets his wife who was just 17 years old at the time. She was just done with secondary school, which is the equivalent of high school. They got married in 2004. She said she agreed to marry him because she came from a poor family and Saint Thomas marriage could seem like a good way out of the hardship. So they get married in 2004 and then he sends his wife to go live with his own mother in the village in Akanmari, which is where he is from and he moves to Lagos.

4:48 His reason for sending the young wife to live with his mother was so the wife could learn how to be a Good Wife, learn how to keep home, learn how to take care of him and kids if they were to have kids. So she's with his mother and he moves to Lagos to make some money and build a life for them in Lagos. In 2006, which is 2 years after their marriage, he brings the wife over to Lagos to live with him. They live together for a year before he sends the wife back to live with his mother in the village again.

5:22 And his reason was that he couldn't afford to pay rent in Lagos. In 2007, he decided to travel to South Africa. He moved to South Africa and he starts dealing on drugs, selling drugs and he made some friends in the drug world. He ended up having a fallout with some people there and he got shot by one of his friends and he he ran back to Nigeria. Now he's back in Nigeria. He starts selling spare parts for cars, you know, vehicles like exhausts and spare tires and stuff like that. I don't know any car parts, but I know tires.

6:00 So yeah, he sold car spare parts for vehicles like like Tipa, huge trucks. He does the business for a couple of years and then he goes bankrupt because he says that the custom immigration officers seized his goods when they arrived at the custom checkpoint. That was all his investment. So he ran out of money. At this time he had moved his wife from his mother's place in the village to Ghana. The wife was now staying in Ghana and they had some kids. When he loses his money, according to the wife, she had just given birth to one of their kids and there were hospital bills to be paid and other bills to be paid.

6:45 He pays the bills but then tells her that things are really tough for him right now because he just lost all his goods to the custom immigration office, that he doesn't know what to do next, but he will think of something. Given that the wife knows, oh, my husband's struggling. She's not really making demands for anything. She's just happy to be able to afford food for the kids and we don't only call for food and for rent and school fees. But never asked for anything, no luxuries, nothing. It's not really sure or specified the exact month he starts kidnapping people, but due to the time frame, I'd say 2011 to 2020 eleven or 2012 because in 2013 he attempts to abduct the CEO of God is Good Motor Transportation.

7:32 He failed, but he said that that was one of his earliest attempt. So he didn't say that was his first attempt. And you know, kidnapping, I don't know how it goes, but I'd assume it takes a lot of planning and preparations and that could take like months. So if that was one of his earliest attempts, probably he started like a year before. At first he started in a number of state and when it wasn't really going well for him with the whole kidnapping thing, he moved to a dual state and tried there.

8:05 It didn't work out for him as well so he moved to and that's when he attempted to abduct the CEO of GIG. During the attempt to abduct the CEO, the police showed up and they shot at the kidnappers and two of them were killed and three escaped. Yvonne was there in person, he was the driver and two other of his hench men or gang members were able to escape with him while two were killed. At this point, he hadn't been really successful kidnapping anyone for ransom, and he must have felt like there must be something we're doing wrong, We're not doing this right, because then he incorporates this whole new strategy, like revamps the whole process and decides we have to act in teams.

8:54 Team abduction and team detention. Now team abduction doesn't know the people in team detention and vice versa and the people in team one and team 2 which is abduction in detention, they don't know him so they work together but his gang members barely know him in person, they don't know where he lives, they operate on the phone and they barely meet in person. Now out of all the members he had which were like 4 members plus himself 5 only one of them knew him personally which was his right hand man Uche.

9:30 Uche was one of the hench men who was part of the abduction team and that was the only person who knew him, but still none of them knew where he lived. They get a place where they would detain people when they were abducted, Uche decided or he suggested to Ivan's. According to Ivan's, Uche suggested that they rent an apartment where they would detain these people and they would rent the place in his wife's name. Apartment to detain people will be rented in Uche's wife's name and the wife has no idea what her husband for money or their detention then is rented out in her name which affiliates her to their actions even when she's unaware they start to operate.

10:18 They abduct so many people they would abduct demand for ransom in dollars. The highest money with the highest ransom they received was $1 million, and they also receive over 225 or so EUR as ransom payments. And they would receive 50 million naira, 100 million naira in ransom. If you convert $1,000,000 to naira, I think you're already capping a billion. No. Are you already capping a billion? Let me check real quick. Yeah, 'cause I want to know $1 million, yeah, yeah, $1 million today would give you 1.4 billion naira, and that's in today's current exchange rate.

11:11 Huge money. They were making huge money that suddenly in the span of a year, Ivan's built himself 2 mansions in Lagos, Nigeria. Within a year, he said he spent over 15,000,000 naira each on those two houses. I think those were the houses in Ghana and he bought himself a house valid at 130 million naira and he furnished all his four properties and he said he spent about 300 and something million naira on those four homes, which back then was a huge amount of money. This is around 2015, 2016. The police are out looking for him after he tried to abduct the CEO of GIG.

11:57 The police had put out BOLO. They're looking for him. Everyone's on on the lookout, but they were not able to catch him up until 2017, which is when he's captured. Now in 2017, news start flying that the billionaire kidnapper has been caught. His wife finds out on the News Online, you know, on blogs. In 2017, he gets caught because he attempts to kidnap someone, kidnap the person. They take him to their detention den and somehow by some good good luck, this victim manages escape, runs to the police, tells them what happened and where he was being detained.

12:36 So the police go there to raid the place and they find ammunition, they find weapon and things like that. But they couldn't find Ivan's himself because he, like he said, his people barely saw him in person. So chances that he would be there was very slim. But they were able to track him to his house, one of his homes that he owned in Lagos and they went there to to arrest him. But he and some of his gang members, they started to fire at the policemen. So the policemen, they fired back and eventually overpowered Ivan's and his men and they were all arrested.

13:13 They bring them to the station. They searched the hope and these are some of the things they found at Ivan's place. They found five AK47 rifles, one AK 49, rifle 2, double barrel long 2. English pistols 59 AK47 magazine with ammunition 1272 live ammunition of AK479 millimeter and five different plate numbers. Vehicle plate numbers. Yvonne has been interrogated and he's being asked, how were you able to evade the police this whole time? And he said because for one, there were no known pictures of him.

13:58 His family members didn't have his picture, like his mother, his siblings, his wife, none of them had a picture of him. Even in his home, where he lived, anywhere he lived, never ever did he have a picture of himself anywhere. So basically and no camera roll for him, no pictures since they couldn't put a face the name, it couldn't easily identify him even if they were able to know his real name and look for him. People around never knew his real name because he always gave fake names to different people.

14:29 One of his names were Evans, Richard, Sonny, Mike and even George. So different names and no pictures was how he was able to evade the police for the long. And he was also asked why did you request for your ransoms in dollars instead of NERA? He said I just wanted to be different. He requested for ransom in dollars to feel special because you're abducting Nigerian victims and you're requesting them to not involve the police, but you are. We're asking them to give you this huge amount of money in dollars.

15:06 So now they have to go to the bank, withdraw this amount of money, which will raise alarms at the bank because the bank managers would be wondering why you need this amount of money in cash. They're more likely to alert the police in your behalf and you want them to bring it to you without involving authorities. Otherwise you will kill their loved ones just to feel different, special. Nothing deep about it. There was no really special reason for asking for ransom in dollars. I just wanted to feel different.

15:36 And he was asked, did your family know what you were into? He said my wife had no idea. My siblings had no idea. But my mom, she knew what I was into. And she always told me that she was not comfortable with what I I did for money. But I mean there was nothing she could really do. And he was also asked how much money were your, your gang members making from each operation? He said well the detention team would make 2 millionaire per operation. The abduction team which included his right hand man.

16:10 They shared whatever was left of the money. Whatever they made was dependent on how much ransom they got. So he was. So he was taken to court. His trial dragged on for a while and on 30th of August he was arraigned with several accomplices in March of 2018. One of his Co defendants was denied bail due to the scale of the crimes and in February OF2022A, Lagos High Court found him guilty of kidnapping and conspiracy and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In September of 2022, he was sentenced to another 21 years for kidnapping charge at Ikeja Special Offenses Court.

16:56 Before his sentences of life imprisonment and another 21 year sentence, his wife took an interview with Vanguard and said so many things about the husband which included his early childhood like I mentioned at the beginning. And she also said that she had no idea what the wife, the husband was doing for money. Like the husband has said earlier that she never even knew the husband had money and now she's shocked to find out that he's a billionaire kidnapper that he dealt in billions. He had that amount of money.

17:29 She never even knew about the house where she and the kids were living in Ghana was a rented apartment which he would send money to one of his agents accounts in Ghana and the agent would in turn pay the rent for him. She didn't even know that the husband owned 4 properties, 2 in Ghana and two in Lagos and she also said that she had moved to Lagos in 2016 because she stayed in Ghana for six years after the husband was back from South Africa and started his spare parts business. At some point during that time, she moves to Ghana with the kids because he sends them there.

18:10 Remember before I mentioned that after he lost his goods to the custom immigration, he goes to Ghana to pay the hospital bills and other bills that had accumulated after the wife gave birth to one of the kids. She said after then he returns to Nigeria after paying the bills and everything he works whatever he tells her, he's still doing the same holding business. So, you know, import and export of importing spare parts to sell to businesses like mechanics. So for the next 6 years, she doesn't see him.

18:39 They speak on the phone. But barely. After six years of very little communication and barely seeing him, she decided to come to Nigeria to see him because she had called him prior to coming and was like, what's going on? I barely hear from you. And you, you no longer visit us. And the kids were on the phone with him. They were literally crying, saying they miss him, he should come see them. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, he would come soon. He would come soon. So she decided to call one of his friends, which was the only person she knew that was close to him.

19:10 The friend was like, yeah, he will come see you guys soon. But for now, he's just here in Lagos, in Festac with his girlfriend. So the wife was wondering, my husband has a girlfriend. So she calls him again. What is this? I'm hearing you have a girlfriend there. That must be why you're not speaking to us or coming to see us. And he told her not to listen to rumors that he doesn't have a girl and he's busy working but he will come see them as soon as he could. So she said she wasn't going to wait around for him to visit them whenever he decided.

19:41 So she comes over to Lagos with the kids in 2016. She stays with him for a year and they stayed in a rented apartment because he told her that he was working on his own house at the time and he would be done soon and then they could move to the new place, but until then they would have to stay at the rented apartment. She said that she didn't see her husband cheating on her. She never caught him speaking on the phone with someone suspiciously. But it was suspicious that her husband had multiple phones, that every time he'd have to charge his phones, he would turn it off.

20:17 It had passwords on it. So even if she were to turn it on to Snoop around, there was a password on it which she never knew. So she couldn't touch it. And then she'd confront him why you was turning off your phone. And when he saw there's a password, I can't get into your phone. And he would threaten to beat her up if she ever tried to Snoop around his phone. She also said she'd ask him. We were always working and I'm happy that we're able to pay our bills now. But I want to see your office. I want to see where you work.

20:46 I'm here, I'm not working, I'm not doing anything. I'm always home. The kids go to school, I'm home doing nothing. Can it be take your wife to work day today, please? And he'd tell her, no, you know, it's an import business that I do. So whenever they arrive at the the the custom or wherever they arrive, wherever it is, the warehouse, anywhere, I just ship them off to my customers directly. So they don't even sit at our place. So there's no need for an office. I barely even go to the office or anything.

21:14 So don't worry. I don't have an office to show you. So she said if she had any inkling that her husband was killing on a lifestyle like this or this type of business, she definitely would have spoken out. She ended her interview with pleading with the Nigerian government to please forgive him. You know, clemency and all that. Only one thing out of everything you said in an interview rubbed me the wrong way because she said he didn't know what he was doing. He had no idea what he was doing. I'm like, what woman this is?

21:46 This is a 30 something year old man or a 40 something year old man and you're saying he had no idea what he was doing really. So she begged the government and even suggested how about you sell all his properties and and sell every of his possessions and return the money back to the victims. Please forgive my husband, but clearly that cannot fix anything. You can't just sell off all his properties and return it to the victims and tell them, oh, that should erase the trauma. That should erase all the nightmares that his actions cost you just because you have the money back, which will never be the full money because he's spent it.

22:25 His lawyer, Mfoa Tudo, while addressing the court, admitted that his client was a young man consumed by crime but is now a repentant person. He's penitent. He revealed that events scored AIDS in all his papers in the NECO examination and he's now a 200 level student of the National Open University of Nigeria. NOUN. He has offered to surrender all his I'll gotten property as part of the plea bargain if the court considered his plea on compassionate grounds. Said I never ever saw my husband as a rich man because he never, ever acted like a rich man.

23:08 We drove the same old cars. He would wear the same shorts, the same shoes, the same clothes for months, for years without changing them. Nothing about him looked like a wealthy man anyways. He's currently sitting in jail now. Ivans wasn't just a criminal, he was a man who turned fear into dollars. When you look at a story, you see a few big truths. Truths like poverty, births, crime. When he was dealing with severe poverty, severe hardship, that's when he got the idea for abduction. You can also see truths like there is power in anonymity because he insulated himself so well that even his own kidnappers didn't know where he lived lived and that's how he was able to survive for years doing what he did without getting caught.

23:58 Yvonne's reign was a symptom of a broken system. A system where it's super hard and really really hard for an average Nigerian to earn your bread honestly. And even those that work super hard to make a living have too much problems. They have so much bills, zero help from the government, or even policies to help the people that whatever money they make is just burned on bills. And this system is even tougher. Those with 0 to no education like Ivan's. When they feel like they have no other options, all the odds are against them.

24:35 They turn to targeting the rich because they don't see the government as the problem. They see the rich as the problem because the government officials are the government and are also the rich. I will leave it here for now. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode with me and Esther. And if there's any part of the story that felt off, any information that was miscommunicated or incorrect, please do tell me in the comment below. And if there are any recommendations what case we should talk about next, please do leave in the comment below as well.

25:12 And please subscribe, follow, suggest and share to friends and family anyone you think should be listening to these cases. Thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you in the next one. Until then, please stay safe, stay sharp. Remember monsters don't always look like monsters, sometimes they are attractive as well. Live and let live. See you next time, bye.