Ritualists behead woman, abandon body on highway

• Police arrest man with three skulls in Ibadan

Shocked residents around the Port Harcourt Road, Owerri, Imo State capital, woke up yesterday morning to see a fresh headless body of an unidentified young lady dumped along the road by suspected ritualists, with one of her breasts cut off.Blood was also dripping from the head and breast regions of the body. The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, Andrew Enwerem, told The Guardian that the police had evacuated the body while investigation is going on.

The incident happened in Mgbirichi community in the Ohaji/Egbema Local Government Area of the, sending residents into a state of panic when the headless body was found lying somewhere near the Owerri-Port Harcourt Expressway.

A resident of the community, who pleaded not to be mentioned, told reporters that the beheaded woman was seen in the community on Sunday. According to the resident, the community woke up on Monday morning to the disturbing sight of a woman who had been “beheaded, with one of her breasts also severed, lying on the road.”

Meanwhile, the Oyo State Police Command on Monday paraded a 27-year-old ritualist, Sodiq Rasheed, with three human skulls. Also another gang of suspected ritualists, who specialize in hyptonising their victims for money-making were also paraded at the Command Headquarters in Eleyele, Ibadan.

The Commissioner of Police, Abiodun Odude, who spoke to newsmen while parading the suspects, assured residents of Oyo that the command has “reviewed its security architecture to guarantee security of lives and property during and after the forthcoming Eid-El-Kabir in the state”.He said that Rasheed was arrested with the exhibits along Ijebu-Ode/Idi Ayunre road. The 27-year-old suspect, who confessed to the crime, disclosed that an Islamic cleric simply known as Alfa Hadi, currently at large, requested him to bring the human parts for the purpose of money-making rituals.

The police boss said the suspect is assisting in investigation to nab the fleeing accomplice. Odude also disclosed that a syndicate of fraudsters suspected to be ritualists has been smashed by the command.The suspects, who professed to be Islamic clerics, fraudulently obtained the sum of five million, eight hundred thousand naira from an innocent victim, Waheed Owolabi, under the pretext that they could proffer spiritual solutions to his financial difficulty.He said that the victim was taken to a shrine belonging to Alhaji Hassan Adamu, where he was hypnotized and made to drink a concoction as a result of which he lost his senses.

The victim was said to have petitioned the Commissioner of Police who immediately directed that a thorough investigation be carried out with a view to arresting the syndicate.During investigation, one of the suspects was arrested in Ojoo area by detectives attached to the Ojoo Police Division. However, further investigation carried out by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Command led to the arrest of two other members of the syndicate Musa Usman (35) and Ibrahim Ibrahim (aka Ojonla) 49, at their criminal hideout in Ibadan.

Also, the long arm of the law caught up with a fraudster who went about calling himself a Professor of Animal Husbandry, University of Ibadan. The suspect, Olayinka Emmanuel, aged 54 conspired with Adegoke Adewumi ‘m’ aged 53, to fraudulently obtain the sum of N1 million from a male victim, Kolawole Kamorudeen. The duo lied to their victim that they were merchants of animal multivitamin. The suspect parted with the sum believing that he was actually buying animal multivitamin only to discover that the so called multivitamin was after all green beans branded as multivitamin.The suspects confessed to the crime and disclosed that the fake label was printed somewhere in Oluwole, Lagos. Four cartons of the green beans branded as multivitamin were recovered in the course of investigation.