The family of a 300-level Theatre Arts student at the University of Uyo (UNIUYO) has raised an emergency alarm over his whereabouts, six months after he was lured away and taken into captivity.
The victim, Utibe Asian, went missing on December 3, 2025, after receiving a phone call from an unknown number prompting him to step out to an undisclosed location within the Uyo metropolis. Despite the family scrambling to pay a negotiated ransom to the captors, the student has not been released, sparking deep fears within the local community regarding his safety.
Speaking out during a press briefing, the victim’s father, Pastor Aniefiok Asian, detailed a harrowing timeline of extortion and silence from the criminal elements.
On the 3rd of December, Utibe was lured out via a phone call and subsequently abducted. Later that day, the kidnappers established contact, initially demanding a staggering sum of N30 million. On the 5th of still that same month, the family formally lodged a criminal complaint with the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Akwa Ibom State Police Command. A formal statement was documented by an officer identified as Mrs. Jumbo. Following intense negotiations, the abductors agreed to reduce the demand to N500,000 which was on the 13th of Decemeber. The family hurriedly transferred the money into a specified bank account.
“I was directed to prepare and go to Abak and pick my child up,” Pastor Asian recounted. “Since that day of payment, the abductors did not call again, nor was my son’s voice heard.”
The distraught father expressed profound frustration over the apparent lack of progress by state security apparatuses. Despite submitting critical digital footprints including the phone numbers used by the abductors and the destination bank account details, the Department of State Services (DSS) and state-level police have been unable to crack the case.
Pastor Asian revealed that petitions had been sent directly to the Akwa Ibom State Commissioner for Internal Security, Major General Uko Essien (retd), and the State Commissioner of Police, Baba Azare, but yielded no concrete search-and-rescue breakthroughs.
Left with no other alternative, the family is now pleading for direct intervention from the Inspector General of Police (IGP) in Abuja. They are requesting the deployment of specialized national tracking teams to take over the investigation, map out the bank transaction trail, and find out what happened to the young student.
When contacted for an official update on the state’s response, Akwa Ibom Police Commissioner Baba Azare stated that the command’s central leadership had not been fully briefed on the case through standard operational administrative loops. He advised the family to re-route their report through specific official command channels to enable an immediate, high-priority follow-up.
