Two suspects, Elijah Emmanuel and Tony Oghanetega, who allegedly killed a 17-year-old Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidate, Thompson Omokhafe Adams, have been arrested by the police in Lagos State.
The suspects confessed to the police that they killed the teenager to conceal another crime, as the deceased boy had identified one of them.
Investigations by the police also revealed that the same suspects had, in November 2025, abducted a female victim and killed her after collecting N300,000 (three hundred thousand naira) ransom from her family.
Elijah Emmanuel, aged 23, and Tony Oghanetega, aged 21, were among 118 suspects arrested by the Lagos State Police Command in the past month.
The State Police Commissioner, CP Tijani Fatai, while speaking with newsmen on Wednesday, said: “In line with this commitment, the Command recorded remarkable operational successes within the month of April 2026, resulting in the arrest of numerous criminal suspects involved in armed robbery, cultism, kidnapping, vandalism, unlawful possession of firearms, street violence, and other related offences.
“These achievements further reaffirm our resolve to rid Lagos State of criminal elements and sustain peace, safety, and public confidence in policing.”
According to the Lagos Police boss, the achievements include the arrest of 118 suspects and the recovery of 11 locally fabricated Beretta pistols, one locally made cut-to-size pistol, one English Beretta pistol, two dane guns, nine telecom power batteries, four cutlasses, one knife, one bag of substances suspected to be Indian hemp, assorted charms, and other incriminating items.
CP Tijani told newsmen that on 27 April 2026, at about 20:00hrs, operatives of the Command, acting on credible intelligence, traced and arrested two suspected kidnappers at Lucy Fibre Area, Ikorodu, Lagos.
The suspects are Elijah Emmanuel, aged 23, and Tony Ekwane Oghanetega, aged 21.
He explained that preliminary investigations revealed that the suspects were linked to the kidnapping and gruesome murder of Thompson Omokhafe Adams, aged 17, which occurred on 22 April 2026.
Further interrogation also revealed that the suspects had earlier kidnapped and murdered a female victim on 30 November 2025, during which a ransom of ₦300,000 was paid by the victim’s family.
According to a police source, one of the suspects, Tony Oghanetega, confessed that they killed the boy while he was returning from a JAMB centre.
He further stated that his partner, Elijah, who was close to the boy, lured him to the location where he was killed.
They tied his hands and legs before strangling him to death. Tony was the first to strangle him, and when he became tired, the second suspect, Elijah, also strangled him to ensure he was dead.