Ogunremi Bunmi (who is also known as Bunmi Bafon) is a Nigerian criminal who was given a death sentence by hanging in July 2026 by the High Court in Ekiti State. The Ekiti State Police Command first arrested him in November 2021 as a member of a notorious kidnapping syndicate that was terrorising Ekiti and Ondo states.
Ogunremi Bunmi, who was the son of the late prominent traditional chief (Chief Sesan Ogunremi) of Ado-Ekiti, was caught by the police Rapid Response Squad (RRS) when he was 49 years old. After his arrest, he gave several high-profile confessions concerning several abductions, including:
- He admitted to having plotted and arranged the kidnapping of his own mother-in-law.
- He was the leader of the gang that abducted Alhaji Sulaimon Akinbami, a well-known petroleum dealer at his filling station in Ureje, Ado-Ekiti, in January 2021.
- The syndicate admitted to having kidnapped Olowo Bolaji in Ipoti-Ekiti in 2020, along with an unnamed woman, and to having carried out another operation in Akure, Ondo State.
On the 24th of July 2026, the High Court in Ekiti State, at Ado-Ekiti, convicted Bunmi (who at the time was 53) together with three other defendants—Dele Jimoh (57), Ige Adu (56), and Blessing Ayeni (32)—on four counts involving conspiracy, kidnapping, murder, and the illegal possession of firearms. This verdict was based on an incident that took place on May 5, 2022, when the group plotted the kidnapping of a well-known resident, Chief Emmanuel Ajayi, from his home in the area near the Immigration Office in Ado-Ekiti, after which they killed him. As a result, the court sentenced all four people to death by hanging.
The additional investigative and legal information shows the full workings of Ogunremi Bunmi’s criminal network, his record as a person with a history of prior offences, and the precise character of the trial which eventually resulted in his death sentence.
During the trial at the Ekiti State High Court under Justice Olalekan Olatawura, details emerged regarding how the syndicate was systematically dismantled:
The police sergeant Oladele Ayodeji stated that the investigation took a dramatic turn after a further robbery at Ekute in Ado-Ekiti, when a key member of the gang, Akeem Banjo Adebayo (going by the name Oro), was arrested at that scene. During his first interrogation, Adebayo admitted to the wider kidnapping ring and immediately identified Jimoh Dele and Ogunremi Bunmi as major participants before later escaping from police custody.
On the basis of Adebayo’s confession, the police carried out raids at various locations. At Jimoh Dele’s house, the investigators found four locally made, cut-to-size single-barrel guns, 13 live cartridges, and hair attachments (which were used for disguises) concealed inside a sack.
- The state prosecutor, Kunle-Shina Adeyemo, put forward a convincing case by producing two important witnesses and submitting key physical evidence. This evidence consisted of the defendants’ original taped confessions, a video disc containing their admissions, and an official medical report from the Afe Babalola University Multi-System Hospital (ABUAD MSH) showing how the injuries were sustained and the manner of the victim’s death, Chief Emmanuel Ajayi.
The defendants, when putting in their own defence, were represented by their legal advisers, Adeyinka Opaleke and Olugbolaga Sunday, but did not call a single witness to support their assertions of innocence.
A major discovery at the sentencing was that Ogunremi Bunmi had a previous criminal record. Justice Olatawura made it clear that Ogunremi Bunmi was already a known ex-convict when he joined this particular syndicate. The judge stated that the confessional statements proved beyond any doubt that they were “serial kidnappers, armed robbers, and housebreakers”. In his last speech, Justice Olatawura pointed out that the Criminal Code Law of Ekiti State provided no scope for judicial discretion or leniency in view of the seriousness of kidnapping combined with murder.
When the Ekiti State Police Command originally paraded the group, the hierarchy and support structure of the gang were exposed:
Dele Jimoh (also known as Dele Petim) was arrested in Ilorin, in Kwara State, and was found to be the third-in-command of the whole network; Ogunremi Bunmi (Bunmi Bafon) and Ige Adu worked directly with him.
— The syndicate was not operating in isolation. Police also caught Jimoh Fayoke (a woman who handled logistics and thus provided them with food) and a local vulcanizer who checked the targets himself and acted as the gang’s local informant.
The court finally decided that the society would be made much safer by removing those people permanently.
When the investigation into Ogunremi Bunmi (Bunmi Bafon) is carried further, it reveals the specific timeframes, the methods used in carrying out the operations, and the highly calculated choice of targets which characterized his syndicate’s activities across multiple states.
The confessions that Bunmi recorded on tape clearly show his step-by-step progression towards carrying out high-profile abductions. Although the first reports had only identified general areas of operation, the exact sequence of the kidnappings he is known to have carried out proves that the stakes involved increased significantly.
- The first abduction that Bunmi confirmed involved Akinbami, a well-known oil marketer, who was forcibly removed from his filling station in Ureje, Ado-Ekiti; the man afterwards stated that his captors spoke fluent Yoruba and had very detailed knowledge of the local area.
- The next target of the syndicate was the wife of the former Ekiti State Surveyor General, Mrs. Olalusi Dapo, and they were successful in abducting her.
- To escape the concentrated security beams that span state lines, Bunmi’s group carried out a large-scale, previously unannounced abduction in Akure, the capital of Ondo State.
In order to achieve the greatest financial benefit, Bunmi carefully planned and arranged the abduction of his mother-in-law, and since he was local, he was able to give the operational units on the ground specific time frames for carrying out the operation. - The syndicate aimed at senior leaders by trying to kidnap the current traditional ruler, Oba Abiodun Ajayi, in Ekiti.
- The crime which ultimately secured their death sentences was the violation of the residence of Chief Emmanuel Ajayi in the area near the Immigration Office in Ado-Ekiti. Different from the earlier operations in which the victims had been left alive to obtain ransoms of several million naira, Chief Ajayi was killed during or right after the operation.
