Suspected Niger Delta militants invaded the palace of Goriola Oseni, the Oniba of Iba, in Iba local council development area of Lagos state on Saturday and abducted
the monarch after shooting one of his wives and killing a guard.
According to the eldest wife of the king, the incident happened as Oseni was about having dinner around 8pm.
She said they were together in one of the rooms when they heard noise from the sitting room.
Thinking it was the children who were playing, the woman, who was simply identified as Alhaja, said she went to caution them only to see “strange faces”.
“I was in the room with the King. He wanted to eat but decided to take his bath first,” she said.
“Suddenly, we started hearing noise from the living room, and it was the children who were there watching television. So, he said can I hear that the children have started with their noise again? As we came out to caution them, we were confronted with strange faces.”
The woman said the “strangers” inside the living room were four, adding that she later discovered that others had surrounded the compound.
She explained that the attackers, who were communicating in Pidgin English, tried to identify their target.
She said they moved close to him and asked: “Na u b the king abi?’ ‘U b the king no be so?’”
After being convinced that, that was the person they were after, they reportedly grabbed himin the attempt to whisk him away.
Alhaja said she resisted by holding the trousers of two of the kidnappers, and not even the shots they released into the air, would make her loosen her grip, until one of them hit her hard.
“The tallest among them hit me on the face, and barked: ‘U b witch?’. At that point, I let go of their trousers, and started pleading with them not to harm him. They forcefully dragged him away.”
The only things that the militants reportedly left with were four phones belonging to their victim.