But far less known was the celebration it produced in the compound of the Iloenyosi family of Abagana, Anambra State.
For this family, the news of Evans arrest was a personal victory.
It all began one early morning on November 25, 2013 when the patriarch of the family, Chief James Iloenyosi, was kidnapped on his way back from mass.
His son, Chikelue Iloenyosi, former Super Eagles player who played professional football in France and Turkey, has not been able to get over what happened to his father. He narrated the event that quickly became a game of hide and seek between criminals and the law enforcement agents.
He told Saturday PUNCH in an emotion-laden tone that his father, who was 86 at the time, was on his way back from their local Catholic church when three SUVs double-crossed him and whisked him away.
He would never see his father alive again.
“When they took him away, they did not talk to us until after five days. They phoned my twin sister. She was sobbing when she called me that the kidnappers had made contact.
“When we the children gathered, my sister called the kidnappers again and they simply told us that they would call back. They did not call back until after another five days just to build our anxiety.”
The N50m ransom negotiation
According to Chikelue, with no idea what could be going on with his father, the kidnappers on the morning of the fifth day called to demand a ransom of N50m.
The routine of begging and pleading for the reduction of the ransom started at this point and after many days, they eventually reduced the ransom to N15m.
Chikelue said, “When we paid the N15m, my father was already dead and we did not know.
“What made me upset was that despite how seriously we worked to get him back, my father did not come out of it alive.”
But upon payment of the ransom, the kidnappers said they were not releasing their victim until the family brought more money. But they never heard from the kidnappers again.
Breakthrough arrests four months later
However, after four months of investigation into the kidnap, said to have involved hundreds of policemen in Anambra State combing the forest at the time, security agencies got a break when a member of the gang that kidnapped Chikelue’s father, a suspect known as Nonso, was arrested along with three other members of his gang.
Chikelue said at the time, Evans was already a popular criminal well known to the State Anti-Robbery Squad of the Anambra State Police Command.
He was said to be a wanted robber known for hitting bullion vans.
“The SARS boss in Anambra told me at the time that any suspect arrested for any major crime always mentioned the name of Evans,” he said.
According to him, the family had to involve a private investigator in the case at a point when there was no longer news about their father’s whereabouts months after the family paid the ransom.
In addition to this, he said a friend of his based in Israel helped to track his father’s line and traced it to a young lady, who said Nonso was his boyfriend.
Chikelue told Saturday PUNCH, “When we arrested the girl, she said Nonso only gave her the phone for safe-keeping, instructing her not to put it on.
We started tracking Nonso. At a point, the current leader of the IRT, Abba Kyari, gave us 18 of his men to follow us to Cotonou, Benin Republic because our trace on Nonso’s line showed he was there.
“We got there and the police arrested a young man, who said he came to buy a car. He said the number was not his and that he only wanted to use it to call somebody in Nigeria.
The police had to let him go when it was clear he knew nothing.
“Later we left the Cotonou guy. Again, our private tracker traced him to Lokoja, Kogi State.”
Evan’s gang member arrested in Lokoja
However, intelligence later suggested that Nonso was in Lokoja.
According to him, he and other members of the gang were said to have relocated there immediately they shared the ransom because many security agencies were after the gang.
Chikelue said after identifying the hotel the suspect might be hiding in, some members of the SARS team in Kogi State moved in to make the arrest.
He said, “I was in Lokoja for two months with a private tracker before we arrested Nonso.
“When we got to the hotel with the police that day, we requested for the list of the people staying at the hotel. The hotel staff mentioned a “small boy” with his girlfriend in one of the rooms.
“We knocked on the door and the girlfriend came out. He said her boyfriend was in the bathroom. But I was hearing a sound inside. He was trying to escape through the window but SARS operatives were already stationed around the hotel.
“He eventually came out and said his name was Emmanuel. But I knew it was him right away because we had been able to obtain his photograph ahead.
“But because I did not want him to panic, I pretended it was not him and told the SARS operatives in his presence that the person we were looking for was an older man.
“He relaxed and was going inside when I called him and said I wanted to ask him something. I dialled his phone number there and then when it rang, we took it and it showed the name ‘Kidnapper football’. The SARS operatives immediately pounced on him and handcuffed him.
“I asked Nonso if he knew me, he said he did not. I told him I was the footballer whose number he saved with that name. He then asked if I was ‘General’ – my alias – and I said yes.”
Punch Report
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