Kidnappers demand albino as ransom for stolen 2-year-old girl

Baby Riziki. [PHOTO: FAMILY/STANDARD]

When the sun sets, it dims Nicholas Otieno’s hope of ever seeing his daughter Rose Florence Adhiambo who disappeared seven months ago.

Nicholas and his wife Hellen say their two-year-old daughter, Riziki, went missing on December 12 last year. They remember that day as if it were yesterday. They had left their home in Nyalenda Nyaori estate in Kisumu County for work - Otieno at the hotel where he is an attendant and Hellen to her salon.

When they came back home in the afternoon, they found their child missing.

“My heart almost stopped beating but I managed to be courageous and ask around for my daughter. Children in the neighbourhood said a strange woman gave them money to buy mangoes at the nearby kiosk, pretending to be playing with young Riziki while waiting for them. It was the last time Riziki was seen,” Otieno says.

They spent the whole night looking for their beloved daughter but when the search yielded no fruits, Otieno reported his daughter as missing at the Kisumu Police station the following day. “It was a traumatising statement to make,” he says.

Later on, he was approached by a taxi driver who told him that he had ferried two women and a child to Oyugis and that he was willing to take him there if he paid him some money.

“I reported the matter to the police but the man has since switched off his phone. But we have been receiving calls demanding for Sh500,000 as ransom before our child is given back to us,” says Otieno.

He adds, “The first call came from a person in Oyugis town in Homa Bay County, demanding Sh500,000. Another caller from Kitale town, Trans Nzoia County, demanded an albino in exchange for our daughter.”

Otieno says he cannot raise the money because his monthly wage barely meets his family’s requirements. And getting an albino as demanded by the kidnappers in exchange for their daughter is a taller order, he says.

“I work as a hotel attendant and my wife is a salonist. We can’t manage to raise the money. It is equally impossible to get an albino. An albino has parents just like us and we don’t want another person to go through what we are going through,” Otieno says.

Life has been hard for the family since Riziki disappeared.

“The void in the family is too big for us to bear. We pray daily to have her back,” says Otieno.

Although in the conversations with the kidnappers Otieno has pleaded with them to allow him talk to the little one, they have refused.

“I have pleaded with them several times to allow me talk to her, just to hear her voice, but all in vain,” laments Otieno.

The family has been making announcements on radio, appealing to anyone who knows the whereabouts of their daughter to contact them without success.

But they are not giving up. The couple’s plea is to anyone who has seen their daughter to sincerely help in reuniting them. They also appeal to security agencies to intervene and help them get their daughter.