The 75-year-old woman, Mrs Elizabeth Otubambo, held in custody since Feb. 15 at Ibara Prisons in Abeokuta for an alleged offence committed by her son has been released.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) learnt in Lagos on Thursday that Otubambo regained her freedom late on Wednesday after spending 41 days in prison custody.
Otubambo’s church member, Mr Innocent Ogbogu, who facilitated her release told NAN in a telephone interview that police and prison authorities collected various sums from him before Otubambo could regain her freedom.
“The policeman handling the matter collected N10, 000, while the warder collected N5, 000, excluding other charges that we settled before the woman was handed over to us.
“The most annoying part was demanding that we produce receipts of home appliances, amounting to N500, 000 before Mrs Otubambo could be handed over to us,’’ Ogbogu said.
The ailing widow was clamped into custody after her only child, named Destiny Otubambo, for whom she stood surety jumped bail.
Destiny was earlier arrested by the Ogun State Police Command along with his three other friends for allegedly accumulating a bill of up to one million naira at a hotel in Agbara in Ogun.
The managers of the hotel, identified as Soultrag Hotel in Petedo, Agara were said to have handed Destiny and his colleagues over to the police, who subsequently, arraigned them in court.
Destiny’s mum was said to have stood bail for her son but the man disappeared into thin air before a court hearing on Feb. 15, a development that prompted the Ogun State Police Command to arraign the old woman, leading to her incarceration.
But after more than one month in custody, Otubambo’s neighbours and some public spirited individuals started raising dust of over the continued detention of the septuagenarian.
The woman, residing at Iyana Isashi community in Ojo, near Lagos, is however, billed to appear again at a magistrates’ court in Ilaro in Ogun on April 4.
