By dusk on Jan. 30, Motunrayo Shittu, 30, held her infant and fretted that her husband, who had phoned an hour earlier, hadn’t returned as promised. After several hours, she took her worries to bed with her three children.
The next morning, her cell phone lit up with a call from her husband, Bamgboye Adegoroye, former chairman of the Ilejemeje Council of Nigeria’s Ekiti state. In horror, she heard the gruff, unfamiliar voice of an abductor speaking shredded English to demand a ransom of 30 million naira—the equivalent of $73,000.
