The suspects arrested in connection with the killing of a Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination candidate in Lagos, Thomson Adams, have confessed to luring the victim and strangling him to death.
One of the suspects, Tony Ogeneta, in a confessional statement seen by PUNCH Metro on Wednesday, disclosed that he and his accomplice, Elijah Emmanuel, decided to kill the victim because he knew details about his family and residence.
The state Commissioner of Police, Fatai Tijani, while addressing journalists on Wednesday at the command headquarters in Ikeja, said the suspects were arrested on Monday, April 27, at about 8pm, following credible intelligence.
According to him, investigations revealed that Adams was returning from the examination hall on Wednesday, April 22, when the incident happened.
The CP explained that the suspects lured the victim, who was their secondary schoolmate, to their apartment and killed him in the process.
He said, “On April 27, 2026, at about 20.00 hours, operatives of the command, acting on credible intelligence, traced and arrested suspected kidnappers at Lucky Fibre, Ikorodu, Lagos.
“The suspects are Elijah Emmanuel, 23, and Tony Ekwen Ogenata, 21. Criminal investigation revealed that the suspects are linked to the kidnapping and gruesome murder of one Thompson Adams, aged 17, which occurred on April 22, 2026. The two boys went out with their friend, Adams, who was their secondary schoolmate. Along the line, they murdered him.”
He further disclosed that the suspects later kept the body in a bag and disposed of it somewhere in the community.
Tijani, however, added that further interrogation exposed the suspects’ involvement in an earlier crime involving a female victim who was killed in November 2025.
He said, “Investigation revealed that they had earlier kidnapped and murdered a female victim on November 30, 2025. The victim was a girlfriend of one of them. They contacted her parents and demanded ransom.”
Tijani said the victim’s family paid N300,000 as ransom, but the suspects still killed her after collecting the money.
“After collecting the N300,000, they still went ahead and murdered the lady,” he added.
Meanwhile, Ogenata, in the confessional statement, said the victim was invited to his apartment by his accomplice, who pretended to be a friend, while they had already prepared weapons, including a cutlass, a nailed stick, chains and padlocks.
He said they coordinated their actions through WhatsApp and planned to intimidate the victim on arrival.
“We planned how to go inside the room and bring out our weapons to put fear in him. When he came, my friend welcomed him like an old friend. I came out with the weapons and started threatening him,” he said.
He added that the victim was forced to sit down while his accomplice chained his legs and locked them with a padlock.
Ogenata said they recorded videos of the victim before deciding to kill him to prevent him from exposing them. The suspect further disclosed that they switched off the light and strangled the victim.
“My friend told me that since he knows my family, we should not let him go. If we release him, he will bring people to us. I held him from behind and strangled him. When I got tired, I told my friend to continue. He also strangled him until he became quiet and we knew he was dead,” he added.
He said they later tied the corpse, placed it in a “Ghana must go” bag and transported it out of the compound under the guise of going for a job.
According to him, they hired motorcyclists and conveyed the body to a remote area where they disposed of it in the bush.
He added that he later contacted his father to arrange for the transport fare before fleeing the area with his accomplice.
The police boss said the suspects would be charged in court upon the conclusion of investigations.
Tijani also disclosed that operatives of the command arrested 118 suspects and recovered several weapons and stolen items during operations carried out across the state in April 2026.
He said the arrests were made in connection with crimes such as armed robbery, cultism, kidnapping, vandalism, and street violence.
According to him, items recovered from the suspects include 11 locally made Beretta pistols, one English Beretta pistol, one cut-to-size gun, two dane guns, nine telecom power batteries, four cutlasses, one knife, 21 bags of substances suspected to be Indian hemp, charms, and other incriminating items.
PUNCH Online had reported in March that a teenager identified simply as Chike, who reportedly travelled from Delta State to visit a friend in Lagos, was shot dead by suspected cultists in the Ikotun area of the state.
