By Suleiman Anyalewechi
“My father’s company owes a bank N40b. So where is the money? From where was Jowizaza going to get even N700m he negotiated with our father’s kidnappers? It’s fake lifestyle”
Kidnapped Anambra state-born billionaire businessman, Sir Joseph Ezeokafor has regained his freedom.
He released by his abductors late on Friday night close to the boundary between Enugu and Anambra states where he was reportedly picked up by a family member. He was released alongside a Catholic Reverend Sister who was also abducted with him.
Although details of the circumstances surrounding his release were not available as at the time of reporting, but the development came just after his daughter Blessing, insisted that the family does not have financial capacity to pay the whopping N1.5 billion ransom being demanded by the abductors.
Blessing had earlier blamed her father’s ordeal on the ostentatious and fake lifestyle of her younger sibling, Joseph EzeokaforJnr , popular as Jowizaza.
In a series of Facebook posts, Blessing said Jowizaza “fake and flamboyant online celebrity image” was the major reason hoodlums targeted their father, believing that money flows like a river in the Ezeokafor family.
Blessing, a young lawyer expressed serious concern and deep regret that her younger brother’s online posturing created a false and exaggerated impression of unlimited affluence within the family.
But ,she insisted that contrary to Jowizaza public posturing ,the Ezeokafor family has been undergoing some stressful moments, financially, of recently, owing to unfavorable business developments .
Besides attracting the attention of her father’s abductors , Blessing insisted that Jowizaza’s celebrity and ostentatious lifestyle was the reason they made the outrageous demand of N1.5 billion ransom .
Blessing emphasized that after creating the false impression of coming from a super rich family , the abductors are now not ready to scale down their demands.
She pointedly said that the Ezeokafors are not as rich as being falsely portrayed by Jowizaza on social media space .
She described the lifestyle of Jowizaza as patently fake and the money he is flaunting as “audio money”, insisting that the family at no point had ever been as rich as her younger sibling will want the world to believe.
According to her ,their patriarch is not given to loudness in lifestyle , noting that apart from the Jowizaza’s fake lifestyle, nothing on earth could have drawn the attention of kidnappers to him.
In another set of posts, Blessing accused her brother of running her family’s business into troubled waters, also, through his fake and misleading lifestyle.
Presentingly, she said that the Jezco Group, is reeling under a heavy debit burden owing to the reckless life of Jowizaza who brought it face to face with bankruptcy.
According to her, the Jezco Group is owing FCMB a whopping N40 billion, being a loan facility, with some other bank accounts which belong to the Group frozen owing to unpaid financial obligations.
She emphasized that Jowizaza almost ran the system aground before he was eased out as a director in a last minute effort to save the entire investment from going into extinction.
An obviously enraged Blessing, further noted that contrary to the fake flamboyant online celebrity image being portrayed by Jowizaza, he has been living on a N1 million monthly salary placed him by their father after being removed as Group director.
Wondering how a N1 million monthly salary could have sustained the false and ostentatious life being portrayed by her brother online, Blessing swore that Jowizaza cannot afford N100 million in cash at the moment.
Consequently, she questioned the rationale behind Jowizaza’s decision to accept the payment of the initial N700 million agreed with the kidnappers before they shot it up to N1.5 billion .
She continously asked the question: “with one million naira monthly salary ,where will he ( Jowizaza ) hope to get N700 million to pay the kidnappers”?.
“Some idiots are saying I should not talk what I know . So u want those kidnappers’ to think we have money and refuse to give them, and kill him there? I will now become fatherless. At this point ,I need to talk so they can be talking reasonably of what we can afford”, Blessing stated .
The source reports that Ezeokafor was penultimate week ,seized while praying at a secluded Church praying ground in Ifitte community in Awka ,the Anambra’ state capital.
He has since been in the abductors’ den ,with his captors insisting on the family parting with N 1.5 billion before his release.
The Anambra State Police Command says it is investigating the circumstances behind his abduction and eventual release.
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