Elechi Amadi Kidnapped

By Okafor Ofiebor /Port Harcourt

Captain Elechi Amadi, foremost Nigerian author, was, last night, kidnapped at about 9p.m., at Aluu in Ikwere Local Government Area of Rivers state.

According to Elechi Amadi’s granddaughter, Miss Emilia Nyeoma Ikegwura, who narrated the incident, Amadi was in the sitting room watching an NTA network programme with one of his wives, when three kidnappers banged at the entrance door.

Miss Ikegwura said; “As the wife asked to know who was at the door, the three gunmen answered in Ikwere dialect, pushed the door and dashed in. They immediately started barking orders while pushing her down and pointing a gun at her. They later ordered everybody to lie down.”

According to her, “They ordered my grandfather, Elechi Amadi, to dress up. They led him to his bedroom, ransacked the room and gave him his shirt and trousers and took him away in a Toyota Hilux van and Mazda car.

Captain Amadi, the writer of great books like, The Great Ponds, The Concubine and others, was said to be asthmatic. He celebrated his 70th birthday a few months ago. He has joined the league of great intellectuals kidnapped in recent times, in Rivers state.

Last year,  Prof. Nimi Briggs, the former Vice-Chancellor of UNIPORT, was abducted. His was followed by the kidnapping of Prof. Barenue Fakae, the Vice-Chancellor of Rivers State University of Science and Technology.

The victims were released after ransoms were allegedly paid. The spokesman of the Joint Task Force, Lt.Col. Sagir Musa, confirmed the incident to P.M.News this afternoon, and said the aim of the kidnap was for percuniary reasons.

He said all security agencies have been put on alert, and appealed for information from members of the public in order to apprehend the culprits. P.M.News learnt that Amadi’s first wife, Mrs. Dora Elechi Amadi, was in Government House to brief the governor, Chibuike Amaechi.

The Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr.Blessing Wikina, said: “The news of the kidnap is not only embarrassing, but a shame at a time when intellectual properties are celebrated all over the world. In the Niger Delta the so-called freedom fighters are nakedly and shamelessly kidnapping our icons.”

He said Amadi is an Ashmatic patient of many years and appealed to the kidnappers to release him unharmed. Amadi worked as a land surveyor and later as a science teacher, before joining the Nigeria Army, in 1963. He served with the 3rd Marine Commando of the army during the Nigeria civil war and retired voluntarily in 1966.

Amadi became the administrative officer of the Rivers State Civil Service in 1968 and left in 1983, as Director-General. He was a Writer-in-Residence and lecturer of the Rivers State College of Education, Port Harcourt, between 1984-1987.

The novelist was appointed the Rivers State Commissioner for Education, and served in that position from 1987 to 1989. He was later moved to the Lands Ministry in 1989. Elechi Amadi’s literary works include: The Concubine, The Great Ponds, The Slave, Ethics In Nigerian Culture, Estrangement and a play titled Isiburu.