There was pandemonium in the early hours of today, Saturday, January 29, 2022 at Oke in Aregba area of Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, when some teenage boys were caught burning the head of a girl said to be in a relationship with one of them, for money rituals.
Luck ran out on them when an indigene named, Segun Adewusi, who is the community’s security guard, observed that four boys were burning something suspected to be human head in a local pot on the road.
It was learnt that the security guard immediately alerted the police at Adatan Police Headquarters from where officers went to the scene to get three of the boys arrested as one had fled before police arrival.
However, he was later arrested following a matching order given to the DPO to ge him apprehended immediately.
Our Reporter gathered that the slain girl, identified as Rofiat, was a resident of Idi-Ape and said to be a girlfriend to one Soliu, who is now in police net.
Soliu was said to have lured the girl to his room, where he held her down and asked one of his friends to slaughter her with a knife.
“The arrested suspects were identified as 17-year-old Wariz Oladeinde from Kugba, 19-year-old Abdulgafar Lukman from Kugba and Mustakeem Balogun from Bode Olude, all in Abeokuta. Soliu was the boyfriend of the girl, he ran away, but was later arrested.
“They killed Rofiat, cut her head, packed the headless body in a sack and started burning the head in a pot. They told the police in the presence of a mammoth crowd that they wanted to use it for money ritual.
“The police have taken the body away to a mortuary,” a source told our correspondent on Saturday.
In a video made available to our Reporter, Mustakeem Balogun, said, “We wanted to use just her head alone for money ritual. Soliu strangled her and he told me to assist him and we cut off her head.”
The Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, confirmed the development in a statement made available to Independent.
His word,”Upon the information, the DPO Adatan Division, SP Abiodun Salau, quickly led his detectives to the scene, where the three suspects were arrested, while the fourth one who happened to be the boyfriend of the murdered girl escaped.
“On interrogation, the arrested suspects confessed that what they were burning in the local pot is the head of the girlfriend of their escaped accomplice.
“They confessed further that the girl who was simply identified as Rofiat was lured by her boyfriend simply identified as Soliu to where she was murdered by four of them, after which they cut off her head and packed the remains in a sack, and dumped it in an old building.
“They subsequently led policemen to the building, where the dismembered body was recovered and deposited at general hospital mortuary for autopsy. The short cutlass and a knife used in cutting off the deceased head were also recovered.”
Oyeyemi further informed that the Commissioner of Police; Lanre Bankole has described the action of the suspects as height of callousness and ordered for a massive manhunt for the fleeing boyfriend of the victim by name Soliu.
The Commissioner of Police, according to the PPRO, has also ordered the immediate transfer of the suspects to homicide section of the state criminal investigation and intelligence department for discreet investigation with the view to arraigning them in court as soon as possible.
Uche Nwosu is a two time Shell Petroleum PLC award winner in the year 2000;
He won the Shell Award on Investigative Journalism and Environmental Cleanliness.
