A middle-aged man, Egbe Godfrey, who claimed to have lost all of his savings with a trading company, MBA Trading and Capital Investment Limited, in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, was arrested by police for attempting suicide on Tuesday and threatened to hang himself as he was distracted and rescued by local residents.
MBA Trading and Capital Investment Limited, operated by a Maxwell Odum, collapsed because it couldn’t pay investors the agreed rate of return. The victims had organized protests three times to request a refund and also called for their arrest.
Godfrey said after his rescue that life had been difficult for him as he lost all of his money at the foreign exchange company, adding that he could no longer take care of his family. He said, “My money was confiscated from Maxwell Odum. He ran away with my money for over a year. I haven’t seen him since.” I am frustrated; My family is frustrated because I cannot take care of them. I cannot train my children and pay the school fees.
“I don’t have a job. There is nothing I am doing. That was why this morning I decided to come here to hang myself.”
Some eyewitnesses, who spoke to our correspondent, narrated how they spotted the victim and persuaded him to come down from the mast.
“The man said he wanted to kill himself because of the money he lost to MBA.
“He said the government was not helping them to recover the money and the victims had gone to the EFCC office to report the case, but nothing was done,” an eyewitness said.
A businessman in the area, who did not want his name in print, said, “He went up there with a rope. He tied the rope there to hang himself. We begged him until he managed to come down.”
The excitement that the victim did not hang himself was, however, truncated when some policemen arrived and got him arrested.
A spokesman for the state police command, Nnamdi Omoni, did not answer several calls put across to his mobile phone.
He had also yet to reply to a text message sent to his mobile phone as of the time of filing this report.