Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
A man claiming to be a prophet and clergy at the Cherubim and Seraphim Church, at Ogboja in Igbo-Ora, in Ibarapa Central Local Government Area of Oyo State, has been arrested by the police for the murder of a housewife in a money making voodoo ritual.
The fake cleric, Oludotun Ogunlade, fondly called ‘Woli Arole Jesu,’ told journalists in Igbo-Ora on Thursday that he met the 25-year-old housewife, Bosede Oguntade, on Facebook where both of them became friends. He then lured his victim from Ilorin, Kwara State, to Igbo-Ora, with a view to finding solutions to her financial challenges and marital problems. He ended up killing her as part of his money rituals.
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The details of the incident are as grim as they are bloody. The suspect is said to have beheaded his victim and severed her arms. He then placed both head and limbs in an earthen pot and lit it on fire. The remains of the dead woman’s head and arms, now reduced to black ashes, were then mixed into a pure alcohol drink. The resulting brew is claimed to cause its drinker to become rich and powerful.
Oyo State Commissioner of Police Shina Olukolu on Thursday led a team of policemen from the state command at Eleyele, Ibadan, to the site in Igbo-Ora where the victim was buried.
According to the police boss, on arrival of the deceased housewife at Igboora, she was drugged under the pretext of helping her overcome her fatigue after her trip to Igbo-Ora from Ilorin. She was allegedly injected with an overdose of sleeping pills and subsequently overpowered and strangled. It was afterwards that her head and arms were dismembered, the rest of her body buried in a shallow grave at the Ogboja area of Igbo-Ora.
Commissioner Olukolu said: “Based on credible information and diligent investigation, the police in Igbo-Ora were able to smash the syndicate and arrested them. Further investigation revealed that the severed parts were allegedly crushed into powder for rituals to become powerful and rich. Two knives used to kill and sever the body parts of the victim, a white cloth bag containing a substance inside a gourd, where the alleged powder from the severed parts was kept, and a bottle of Stallion Schnapps were also recovered.
“Meanwhile, investigation is still ongoing to further unravel the mystery and the motive for this heinous crime. The police will continue to be resolute in our determination to stamp out crimes and criminality in society.”
The police commissioner urged the public to be wary of trusting individuals or groups that are entirely strangers, who they meet on social media, particularly those who claim to posses the power of clairvoyance or ability to combat and successfully treat terminal diseases, or have solutions to social and marital challenges.
Giving an interview to journalists at the scene, the voodoo “prophet” narrated:
“My name is Oludotun Ogunlade, also known as Arole Jesu. I gained the church experience from my former boss, who happened to be a prophet in Cherubim and Seraphim Church. I later settled down with my own church after the death of my grandpa.
“The woman and I have been chatting on Facebook since January of this year. I later told her to come and pay me a visit here (Igbo-Ora), to which she later agreed.”
Ogunlade mentioned he had a friend called Mutiu Ayorinde who had told him “about the challenges he was having concerning his work, and he said he could go to any length in getting quick money. Although I have been doing something like this for him before, but he said he needed something that would bring money quicker this time around.
“The woman later came in the night from Ilorin to Iseyin, where I went to pick her to Igbo-Ora. I gave the woman a sedative injection on May 31, after she complained about pains in her body, and she slept off and I cut off her head; her head was later burnt to ashes, which we mixed with other materials that we poured into a hot drink for Mutiu to drink so that his money could come faster, and the remains of the woman were later buried in a grave.”
On his part, Ayorinde, who said he lives at Obada Idi-Emi, Imala, Ogun State, introduced himself as “a pure water machine engineer. I also deal in installation of pure water machine. I went to Prophet Arole and told him that my work was not going well. So, I needed something that could bring quick money for me. He (the fake prophet) showed me the list of the materials I would buy to make the work done, which did not include any human part.
“Later, he called me and said that he had got someone whom he met on Facebook, who we can use to do the work. We buried the woman together after the prophet had strangled her. And later, he told me that we were going to use the head of the woman together with the materials on the list.”
