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Lagos - The kidnapped father of Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel was freed on Monday after detectives traced him to a sprawling city in northern Nigeria and arrested his abductors, the country's federal police said.
Police spokesman Olusola Amore told The Associated Press that investigators followed Michael Obi's trail from central Nigeria's Plateau state to Kano, one of the nation's largest cities. There, officers raided the area where Obi was held, freeing him and arresting a number of kidnappers, Amore said.
Amore said he had other details about the operation on Monday night.
Michael Obi was kidnapped on Aug. 12 while on his way home from work in the central Nigerian city of Jos.
Nigeria, an oil-rich country of 150 million people, is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. Plateau state, in Nigeria's fertile central belt, has seen thousands die in recent years in religious and ethnic violence rooted largely in political and economic issues.
Mikel's family, from the Igbo tribe, is in the minority in the area. However, John Obi Mikel said the kidnapping shocked him because his family never had any problems there before.
Kidnappings in Plateau state are a rarity when compared to Nigeria's oil-producing southern delta, where militants and criminal gangs often kidnap foreigners for ransom. Middle class Nigerian families also increasingly find themselves targeted in the country's East as well.
It isn't the first time a football player's family has been targeted in Nigeria. In 2008, gunmen abducted the younger brother of Everton defender Joseph Yobo as he left a nightclub in Port Harcourt, the delta's largest city. The brother was released unharmed about two weeks later, though it was unclear if a ransom had been paid.
Michael Obi's abduction came after a Forbes magazine survey in June listed Mikel as the seventh highest-paid African player in Europe. The magazine listed Mikel's salary as $5.8 million a year.
