By; RAYMOND TEDUNJAYE, Lagos
Detectives of the Lagos State Police Command have arrested no fewer than 10 members of a criminal syndicate who specialized in killing people and selling their body parts to customers for ritual purposes in various States in Nigeria.
Those arrested so far, according to report, included a woman, who is an Osun priestess, a community chief, an Ifa priest, an Islamic cleric, and a trado-medicine practitioner while others were said to be at large.
This was disclosed by the Police Public Relations Officer, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, who confirmed that the suspects were in Police custody, undergoing interrogation over their alleged conduct.
The names of the suspects were withheld as the Police continued investigation to apprehend their accomplices now at large.
He explained that the suspects were operating in one of the extreme Divisions of the Lagos Command and were arrested through intelligence reports from the public.
SP Benjamin Hundeyin revealed that the leader of the gang, a 33-year old man, Ademola Akinlosotu, had confessed initially that he was exhuming corpses from cemeteries and selling their parts to ritualists but later graduated to killing and selling human parts to customers on demand.
He stated that the leader, Akinlosotu, said that he moved from killing people to harvesting parts because his clients requested fresh parts rather than dead body parts.
Akinlosotu stated: ”While I and some members of the gang would do the killings, he would supply the parts to a 52-year old man, Ahmed Wahab, a.k.a Alfa Bororo, who operated from Badagry in Lagos State and Ogun State, to supply his clients.
The suspect said that a fresh human head is sold at N45,000 or N50,000 while a dried human head sells between N30,000 and N35,000; heart for N70,000 and hands for N50,000.
Akinlosotu admitted to killing two persons, which included a friend he met through social media, before he was arrested. He said that before they killed anyone, the herbalist would be contacted to consult an oracle to determine whether the killing would be successful or would bring trouble.
The suspect alleged that a traditional ruler in Badagry requested him to kill his son because he was giving him problems. He also said that the day they were to carry out the killing was when a friend he met online visited him, and he was killed.
He added that all he harvests when he kills, are the person’s head, the heart, and the hands.
The Police spokesman, Hundeyin, said exhibits of different human parts were recovered from the suspects as the Police continued the trail of other suspects.
The Police Command stated that the suspects would be charged to Court for their criminal activities of conspiracy and murder under the Criminal Laws of the State, after the conclusion of investigations.
