The Lagos State Police Command has apprehended a gang of suspected ritualists, accused of engaging in the gruesome act of killing individuals and trafficking their body parts for sale across different states.
Benjamin Hundeyin, the command Public Relations Officer while confirming the arrest on Friday, identified the suspects as a woman who is an Osun priestess, a community chief, an Ifa priest, an Islamic cleric, and a trado-medical practitioner.
Hundeyin explained that the suspects who operate in Lagos were arrested through intelligence reports from the public, adding that the leader of the gang, a 33-year-old man, Ademola Akinlosotu, 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.
However, Akinlosotu while speaking on his antecedents, noted that he moved from killing people to harvesting parts because his clients requested fresh parts rather than dead body parts.
”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, aka Alfa Bororo, who operated from Badagry in Lagos State and Ogun State, to supply his clients.
"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 speaking further admitted to killing two persons, which included a friend he met through social media, before he was arrested.
"Before we 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, adding that "all he harvests, when he kills, is the person’s head, the heart, and the hands."
Meanwhile, Hundeyin said exhibits of different human parts were recovered from the suspects as the police continued on the trail of other suspects.
The command said that the suspects would be charged to court as soon as investigations are completed.