Now, ritualists’ dens on highway drainages worst threat to road transport
After Tuesday’s discovery, another suspected kidnappers’ den, was on Thursday, bumped upon at Ile-Zik on the Lagos/Abeokuta Expressway, very close Ikeja, by the operatives of Rapid Response Squad (RRS).
Whereas the security operatives reportedly found human parts concealed in some sachets in the place, three suspects have been arrested, while a sharp knife was found on one of the suspects said to have been posing as a mad man.
They were currently undergoing interrogation at Isokoko Police Station.
Business Hilights recalls that such deadly business was noticed in July 2012, when one Clifford Orji started the illicit trade exactly around Charity Bus Stop near Oshodi, in Lagos and the matter went viral.
It was discovered that upon behaving like a mentally retarded person, several phones and contacts were retrieved from him with varied degrees of decomposing human parts meant for sales.
Only on Wednesday, three new suspects were arrested at a suspected den of kidnappers and ritual killers in the Obadeyi-Ijaiye end of the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway.
Two of the suspects, a woman and a man, allegedly disguised as mentally-challenged persons, but the latter was said to have later confessed to being a member of a kidnap gang.
Seized from them included three phones, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card and two loaves of bread, in a bag found with the woman, while the man had some clothes in his bag.
It had been reported that the den, an uncompleted building, was uncovered around 8am on Tuesday after a highway sweeper with the Lagos State Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) alerted residents to the voice of a distressed woman in a drainage channel in the area.
Two of them were set ablaze by a mob, while three others were rescued by the police.
Clothes, slippers and bags believed to be effects of abductees, were found in the building.
The den, located beside the main road at the popular Obadeyi bus-stop, Ijaiye, was exposed by a female sweeper who heard the horrific cry of a victim screaming for help. The cry for help came from an underground tunnel, which linked to a canal at Obadeyi Street.
Unfortunately, before passersby entered the canal, the woman who cried for help had been killed, but her little baby was found. Under the tunnel, soldiers were said to have found different body parts and many routes linking to the canal.
In the course of their hunt, a man belonging to the group was also arrested who later confessed to being part of a 28-member group operating under the canal.
Items recovered from the shrine included charms, carvings, white clothes stained with blood as well as native soap.
According to an eyewitness account, the suspected ritual killers allegedly target pedestrians crossing or plying the road early in the morning and late at night, as the den is just about 50 metres away from the pedestrian bridge.
Business Hilights gathered that the ritualist said that no one can do him any harm. Even some people tried cutting him with machetes and all sorts of weapons but he still wasn’t hurt.”
The pandemonium created traffic gridlock at the axis all through the day as the mob stayed in anticipation of getting more suspects.
Road Transport analysts are now worried on the new twist and dangerous trends now facing commuters especially around mega bus stops that have drainage manifolds and large-sized drainage routes in cities especially Lagos.
