A church protocol officer, Victor Duru, has been arrested by operatives of the Lagos Police Rapid Response Squad (RRS) for allegedly luring church girls to hotels and taking their nude photographs in order to blackmail them in exchange for money.
Duru, 23, was arrested in Surulere after repeatedly blackmailing his church member and girlfriend.
One of his girlfriends (name withheld), whose pictures he had taken with his friend’s help at gun point in a hotel at Ijeshatedo, called at RRS Headquarter to report her experience.
The suspect, a Madonna University dropout, was a protocol officer at a new generation church in Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos.
According to the police, investigations revealed that he had been using the nude photographs of his girlfriend to blackmail her in exchange for money, while there is a growing suspicion that he also laced the drink of another girl with sleeping drug as the photographs obtained from one of his mobile phones revealed.
Confessing to the crime, the suspect said, ”She was my girlfriend. We are same church member. We have been dating for almost two years. We were having break up issues.
”So, I invited her to a hotel in Ijeshatedo. I excused myself and invited my friend, Frank Obinna, to meet me in the hotel. Obinna and I had this planned together.
”The gun was a toy gun. He entered the hotel room and held the lady at gun point. I told her to co–operate, naked her for Obinna to take her pictures. We took seven different shots of her in the nude with my phone. I discharged her that day. This was in September.”
“By early October, 2019, I called her to give me N80,000 or I would throw the nude photographs online. She was only able to offer me N10,000, which she transferred into my brother’s account.
”Last week, Obinna called her again and requested for N40,000. She promised to send something. She was a wonderful girl that had been assisting me before the problem started. On many occasions, she has assisted me financially.”
The police also said Duru attempted to escape from police custody in handcuffs while police were trying to effect the arrest of his accomplice, Frank Obinna, in Ijeshatedo.
The victim, in her statement to the police, alleged that she thought Duru’s friend was a waiter when he entered their hotel room.
“He brought out his phone, I was asking my boyfriend what was going on, he slapped me telling me to remove the blanket covering my body.
”I refused. He dragged it off my body telling me to co–operate. I refused again. He asked his friend for the gun threatening that I cooperate.
”His friend took several shots of my nude. Both of them abandoned me at the hotel room after. I asked him almost a week after what he wanted to do with my photos and he told me that it was the beginning.
”The following Saturday, he threatened to put the photos online unless I pay N80,000 in order to delete them. I paid N10,000 with a promise to pay the balance afterwards,” the victim narrated.
It was gathered that some of the ladies whose nude photographs were found on Duru’s phone came forward when contacted by the police but refused to press charges.
The suspect, along with some of the exhibits recovered from him (toy gun, mobile phones containing the nudes of the ladies), have been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti for further investigations.
Commenting on the development, Commissioner of Police, CP Zubairu Muazu, urged parents to warn their wards and watch the company they keep.