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.
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.
On October 10, 2022, two suspected Internet fraudsters, popularly known as boys, allegedly killed a 40-year-old man, Abdullahi Azeez, in the Owode-Egba area of the state.
The state police spokesperson said the victim’s body was cut into pieces in the bush by the suspects for ritual purposes after his abduction.
On November 10, 2022, four suspected ritual killers were arrested by the state police command in connection with the disappearance of a 36-year-old woman, Aminat Adebayo.
Adebayo reportedly went missing on September 15, 2022, after she was kidnapped and killed four ritual purposes by the four suspects including a hotelier, Soneye Lateef. Oyeyemi disclosed that Azeez Raimi, 21, Yusuf Saheed, 33, Awodero Michael, 27 and Soneye Lateef, 39, were responsible for the act.
On November 22, 2022, a pastor and two others were nabbed for abducting and killing a 39-year-old man, Adekunle Muyiwa, and dismembering his body for ritual purposes.
Oyeyemi said the suspects were Idowu Abel, Clement Adeniyi and Pastor Felix Ajadi, adding that upon interrogation, Abel confessed that the victim, who was his bosom friend, was lured out by him and taken to his second accomplice, Adeniyi’s farm where he was killed and his body mutilated.
On December 2, 2022, two suspected ritualists were arrested for allegedly being in possession of human skulls in the state.
The state Commander, Amotekun Corps, David Akinremi, said the two suspects; Busari Aliu and Adetayo Segun, specialised in exhuming corpses at Agunboye cemetery, Agunboye, Ijebu-Igbo, Ogun State, removing the skulls and selling them to other members of their ritual gang.
On December 15, 2022, a 49-year-old man, Shina Ganiyu, was arrested for allegedly bathing with blood at a community river in the Kotopo area of Odeda LGA. The suspect was reportedly arrested on No 4, Oguji Street, Obantoko Abeokuta.
Oyeyemi said the suspect was arrested when members of the community sighted him at the river bank, where he parked his Nissan commercial vehicle, came out with a local sponge and a container filled with blood and started bathing with it.
He said, “On interrogation, the suspect claimed to have a spiritual problem, and that a herbalist instructed him to perform the ritual. He claimed further that the blood in his possession is not human blood, but that of a cow.”
On December 30, 2022, two brothers; Ayomide Babatunde and Gbenga Babatunde, were arrested for kidnapping a woman and her nine-year-old son for ritual purposes.
They were arrested by policemen attached to Oja Odan Divisional Headquarters when a supposed buyer leaked their secret after he was told to play along with the suspects.
On January 1, 2023, some suspected ritualists reportedly invaded Ipokia community and dug out over 40 skulls from graves. A source said the ritualists invaded different parts of the town, dug the graves to exhume skulls and other human parts.
Some of the residents said they counted over 40 graves dug by the ritualists.
The House of Representatives urged the Federal Government to declare a national emergency on the social vice. Last February, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), condemned the rise in ritual killings and deadly attacks against on-duty policemen and ethnic minorities.
The Ogun State governor on December 14, 2022, sought collaboration between the government and traditional medicine practitioners to curb ritual killings.
Abiodun took advantage of a one-day workshop on a campaign against ritual killings and quackery for the promotion of a wholesome alternate medicine practice for the safety of the people to express his concerns over the development. The state governor decried the nefarious activities of ritual killers and the negative image their activities had given to the state.
Also, Chairman, Ogun Alternate Medicine Board, Mr Balogun Olaleye, stated that it would inaugurate a task force to expose the identities of uncertified traditionalists rendering unlawful services to criminals.
Olaleye noted that the board under his watch had been able to monitor the activities of practitioners in the state.
Olaleye added, “I am saying that the use of human beings or human parts for ritual is not in our value system and we will not accept such. The board is strategic in curtailing the evil acts and we are deploying all means to track down the unscrupulous traditionalists, whom the people believe are the ones rendering the evil services.”
Besides, a group, Nigerian Global Affairs Council petitioned the Federal Government, demanding that anyone found guilty by a court for ritual killings should be sentenced to death by hanging without the option of fine.
The group in a petition also canvassed that an anti-ritual activities bill be sponsored to curb the spate of the killings which it said had made women endangered species.
Commenting on the issue, a social commentator, Precious Ajoonu, identified misinformation, ignorance and poverty as responsible for the rise in the criminal acts.
She stated that there was the need to change people’s mindset and for them to undergo value-reorientation to restore the long-lost values in Nigerian society.
She said, “A lot of education needs to happen. People need to be educated to the fact that these things don’t work. We need a mindset revolution and think properly. We need to also start some value-reorientation exercises. People are just being deceived that killing someone for rituals can make them rich. There is no experiment that backs up that point. There is lot of misinformation encouraged by widespread poverty that has brought us to where we are now.’’
Efforts to get the comment of the Ogun State police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, were futile as of the time this report was filed.
But in his comment, the Force spokesperson, Muyiwa Adejobi, said ritual killing was as a result of unnecessary greed and craziness for money, adding that the get-rich-quick syndrome had become a threatening issue in the country.
He advised Nigerians to be more security conscious in their daily dealings, noting that it was an absurd thinking that human blood could be used for a ritual to activate the potency of any charm.
He stated, “People should also try not to intervene in any conversation in a commercial vehicle because in that process they can easily get hypnotised. Naturally, in Yorubaland for instance we know that there are things which are traditional and cultural. In the olden days, people made use of animals but nowadays our youths believe that whatever voodoo they want without human’s blood won’t be potent enough.”
Adejobi advocated specific laws against ritual killing, noting that the available extant laws only focused on murder and manslaughter. He urged both the state and the national assemblies to revisit the legal system and make constitutional provision for such an offence and punishment for suspects found guilty of such a crime.
He said, “I think something is missing in our legal system. There is no law specifically to handle and make punishment for ritual killing. Generally, what we have is murder or manslaughter. The state and national assemblies should look into it so that we can have a specific law on ritual killing which is a trend now that our penal laws have not actually taken care of. This law will define or describe the offence and as well proffer punishments accordingly. The fact that we should have more stringent punishment than what we have for murder because murder is to kill somebody but to kill and to lose the body literally is a traditional offence which means ritual killings should carry stricter punishment than only murder. We look at our legal framework again to have specific laws for specifics offences such as kidnapping, cultism, sexual abuse, ritual killings, rape among others. We should have more stringent punishments for them.’’
He noted that since there were no specific laws in the constitution for ritual killing, suspects were more often charged with murder.
He added, “In most cases, the highest we charge suspects of ritual killings is murder but to me I think it’s not too good enough. That is why I’m saying we should have a law that will handle ritual killings which means we are having two offences in one; murder and ritual killing. It should be a double punishment that will be stronger than murder.’’
