A 72-year-old man arrested in Obatedo Iwo town in Osun state for severing a human skull from a cemetery has described his act as a mistake.
Idris Ajao who claimed to be a trained bricklayer, said that a herbalist, Tajudeen Jawesola, assigned him to exhume skulls from graves in the cemetery in return for 10,000 Naira.
Police, acting on a tip off, deployed men around the cemetery and arrested him with a skull.
The Commissioner of Police in the state, Fimihan Adeoye said that detectives got the hint about the alleged atrocities of Ajao and trailed him until he was caught with the skull.
Speaking to Channels Television, Ajao said “the downfall of a man is not the end of his life “,”hard time is not forever and “mistake has no master”.
Speaking on in the Yoruba language, he said: “What happened yesterday is so painful to me, I arrived at the cemetery by 6.30PM in Igbote and left the place by 7.30PM, as I was going, the Police apprehended me.
“It was Jawesola that asked me to get the human skull for him. Everybody knows Jawesola to be a herbalist and he wanted to use the human skull to do his work.
“He said he would give me N10, 000. I should not have listened to him. It was a mistake”.
The Police however said that they were still in search of Jawesola.
Family Business
The Osun State Police Command also paraded a group of six persons believed to be related who kidnapped a five-year-old boy and demanded for a ransom from the parents.
Keeping the boy for five days, the group we learnt was finally able to collect the sum of 550,000 Naira from the boy’s family before they were arrested.
The kidnappers were said to have abducted the boy on December 22 at Ipetu-Ijesha and released him after five days.
The gang has as members a mother and daughter, a husband and his pregnant wife, a nursing mother and two others. One of them was said to be at large.
“This kidnapping case is one of the achievements we have been able to record in few days and the arrest of this old man.
“This five-year-old boy was forcefully taken from his parents when the gang arrived to take him and his parents had to run for safety and the boy was kept for about five days before he was released on the 27th of December upon the payment of 550,000 naira as ransom.
“But we thank God that the Police detectives attached to the anti-kidnap unit eventually succeeded in arresting the major culprits. Six of them have been arrested while one is still at large,” he explained.
“The implications is that by the grace of God we are close to cracking the case, but what is interesting in this matter is that all the members of the gang arrested are related to each other in one way or the other.
“You can imagine the kind of trauma they must have caused the five-year-old boy who was separated from his parents for five good days.
“It appears it’s a family business but we thank God that the boy has been reunited with his family.
“He is in God health and the suspects are being processed for necessary prosecution,” declared the Commissioner of Police, Fimihan Adeoye.
He also warned citizens to be wary of those employed to work for them at home.
“What I want members of the public to know is that they should be wary of the people around them because investigation conducted so far shows that there is a kind of conspiracy between the actual abductors and a member of the family of the victim.
“So we advise that people should be very careful with their domestic servants and other members of their family,” CP Adeoye advised.
The Police boss later joined in the destruction of some bags of cannabis recovered by the security agents.
He appealed to the public to continue to collaborate with the Police to rid the state of crime and all evil capable of destroying the youths.
Officers and men of the Osun State Command of the Nigeria police have been charged to maintain professionalism and good conduct in the line of their duty, especially when faced with uncooperative members of the public.