A young boy (pictured left) was recused from a house in Ota, Ogun state
just as he was about to be killed for ritual. Below is the full story
from
Punch
Fate smiled on an unidentified young boy
hawking on Alhaji Jamiu Sulaimon Street in Itele, Ota area of Ogun
State on Tuesday evening as he was rescued from kidnappers in the area,
just as he was about to be killed.
No 3, Alhaji Jamiu Sulaimon, where the
boy was rescued is unarguably one of the most beautiful houses on the
street but no one could have imagined the horror discovered behind its
high walls.
When a Punch correspondent visited the scene
on Wednesday morning, a police patrol vehicle was stationed in front of
the compound to ward off curious residents and looters.
Upon gaining access to the house, it did
not take long for the correspondent to notice a spatter of blood on the
walls of almost all the toilets in the house. One particular toilet had
more heavy smears of blood on its walls and door.
A resident of the street, Abdulateef Isa, told the Punch correspondent that the rescued boy used to hawk belts on the street.
Isa said,
“The boy is Igbo, he sells belts and he is known by many in this area
even though we don’t really know his name. He was hawking with his
friend
yesterday (Tuesday) before this whole issue came to light. His friend,
who is also an Igbo boy, knew when he was called into the compound but
when he waited for more than 30 minutes and his friend had not come out,
he raised the alarm.”
A police officer from the Itele Police
Division said residents of the area came to the
station to report on Tuesday evening that a boy who went into a compound
to sell had gone missing.
“Our divisional police officer instantly
issued a search warrant and detached a team to the compound. When we
got there, a large number of residents had gathered and we had to be
strategic in controlling them for us to gain access.
“We got there and met a young man who
said he was the brother of the owner of the house. He started opening
each of the rooms, acting calm and repeating that, ‘See for yourself,
each room is empty.’
“But our DPO insisted that she perceived
an odour that was abnormal. She asked one of us to climb through a
window and check the corner of a toilet. And there was the boy, covered
in blood. He was even too weak to shout.
“From the look of things, the kidnappers
had already attempted to kill the boy but hurriedly abandoned him and
fled because the victim’s friend raised the alarm. The man we arrested
must have been given order to stay behind and divert suspicion.”
The boy was said to have been blinded in
one eye as caked blood covered one of his eye sockets. There was a
bloody deep gash on his neck also, which was suspected to have come from
an attempt to slaughter him.
The Punch correspondent learnt that the boy
was immediately rushed to the hospital while the man found in the house
was arrested. The agent in charge of the house was also later arrested.
Few minutes after the police left the
compound, the residents set the house ablaze and every valuable in the
house was destroyed.
A four-bedroom bungalow, painted in and out with fancy paint, it was clear the house was built by a wealthy person.
Residents said the house was completed about three years ago.
“The generator in this house runs all day long,” one resident said. “The men we see coming in and going out
of the house keep to themselves. All we know is that so many people come
into the house. Nobody has gone missing on this street before, so
nobody had any reason to suspect anything,” Mr. Olusegun Adio, who lives
a few houses down the street, said.
One of the leaders of the community,
Alhaji Isa Jimoh, who notified the police about the missing boy, said he
never had any inkling that kidnappers could be operating a den in the
area.
Jimoh, who lives about seven houses away
from the horror house, said,
“I have no idea who owns that house and I
have no idea when it was built. The short time it was built from start
to finish, I was not around then.
“When I got report that a child who was
hawking and called inside the compound never came out, I had to inform
the police because I realised it was not the duty of residents to storm
the place.
“The first time the police came, the
place was under lock and key. They went back to their office and when
they came back, they broke the gate, arrested a man inside there and
discovered the boy almost dead on the floor of one of the toilets.”
Jimoh said no one had ever been missing
in the area, which was why they probably did not suspect any criminal
activity in the house.
Spokesperson for the Ogun State Police
Command, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi, said the suspects arrested in the case have
been transferred to the Department of Criminal Investigation, Eleweran,
Abeokuta.
He said,
“Our men from the Itele
Division moved in as soon as they got a report about the house suspected
to be used by kidnappers and succeeded in rescuing the boy alive even
though he was in bad shape.
“The boy will pull through as he is
currently receiving treatment in a hospital. In the meantime, the
Comissioner of Police, Mr. Ikemefuna Okoye, has ordered a comprehensive
investigation into the case. Efforts are being made to apprehend other
accomplices who fled the house. This is just an evidence of our
determination to stamp out criminality in this state.”
Culled from
Punch
