PUNCH
Ritual killings are rife across many states in Nigeria from Kano, Edo, Zamfara, Imo, Enugu, Osun, Oyo, Nasarawa, Niger, Rivers, Abia to Ogun among others. But available statistics showed that the cases are more in Ogun State. It’s disturbing that with the reported cases, the state is gradually becoming the headquarters of ritual killings in the country.
Eleven Ogun residents lost their lives and their body parts sold by ritualists to human parts merchants in the last 13 months. Specifically, the state recorded 15 cases of ritual killings between January 2022 and January 2023. Twenty-four suspected ritualists were arrested while two were set ablaze by an angry mob.
Two residents escaped from being killed by ritualists who intended to sell their body parts to buyers. The worrisome development perhaps made the state governor, Dapo Abiodun, to urge trado-medical practitioners in the state to wade into the issue and end the ugly act. Pathetically, 14 days after the plea by the governor, a mother of two was brutally murdered and her body parts sold.
Even the dead were not allowed to rest in peace as 43 graves were dug and their skulls exhumed. The latest incident of ritual killing as of the time this report was filed occurred on December 28, 2022 in Ijebu-Ode area of the state. A gang reportedly killed three women including a girlfriend of one of them after sleeping with her.
A 36-year-old herbalist, Taiwo Ajalorun, reportedly confessed to the gruesome killing of a 26-year-old mother of two and two others in the Ijebu Ode area of the state. Ajalorun and his accomplice, Lukman Oladele, were said to have strangled the woman shortly after sex and thereafter sold her body parts including heart and legs.
Cases of ritual killings in Ogun
On January 29, 2022, two teenagers and two others were caught burning the head of a female teenager, Sofia, who they reportedly killed for money ritual purposes at the Oke Aregba area of Abeokuta in Ogun State. The suspects; Wariz Oladehinde, 17, Abdul Gafar Lukman, 19, Mustakeem Balogun, 20, and one other identified as Soliu, were caught in the act by a guard, Segun Adewusi, who alerted cops at the Adatan Police Station. One of them had been discharged by the court.
On February 12, 2022 two suspected ritualists were set ablaze by an angry mob for being in possession of human parts in Oja-Odan in the Yewa-North Local Government Area of the state.
The state police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, condemned the act in a statement. The angry mob invaded a police station where the suspects were being interrogated, overwhelmed the cops on duty, hijacked the suspects, beat them to death and set their corpses ablaze.
On April 9, 2022, a suspected internet fraudster, Peter Albert, died shortly after he allegedly engaged in a money ritual in the Ado-Odo/Ota LGA of the state. It was gathered that he consulted a Muslim cleric for a money-making ritual which eventually terminated his life.
On April 27, 2022, a mortuary attendant, Kushimo Lukman, was arrested in Abeokuta, the state capital, for cutting off the head of a dead boy. Lukman, who was arrested by men of the state-owned security outfit, So-Safe Corps, on routine patrol, said the severed head was requested by one Ifalonishe for N50,000.
On July 1, 2022, a suspected yahoo boy reportedly ‘used’ a mentally-unstable young lady for ritual; she stripped herself and barked like a dog in Abeokuta. Oyeyemi said the young lady was allegedly used spiritually and diabolically by a suspected yahoo boy after which she started barking like a dog.
