- He fries them on Tuesdays, Thursdays – Neighbours
- Police launch manhunt
The Police in Kwara State have launched a manhunt for an ‘Islamic’ cleric, Folorunsho Babatunde, widely known as Alfa Isa, who allegedly specialises in the sale and distribution of human body parts in Ilorin, the state capital.
The police, on Thursday, declared the 33-year-old cleric wanted.
Alfa Isa had allegedly been caught with human body parts, including heads, fingers, heart and a decomposing corpse, in his room at Eleran Compound in the Pata Oloje area of Ilorin on Tuesday afternoon.
Recall that two Islamic clerics were also caught with human body parts in Ilorin in March and April this year.
However, some youths in the community alleged that the runaway cleric was always seen frying some “meat” every Tuesday and Thursday, the two days he was said to have set aside to attend to his “customers” from outside the state.
His clients, it was learnt, usually thronged the cleric’s house on each of these two days in different makes of flashy cars to “see” him.
Luck, however, ran out on the cleric last Tuesday, when the youths in the community, who said they could no longer bear the foul odour emitting from the suspect’s house, summoned the courage to challenge him.
They were said to have raised a search team, which forcibly broke into the cleric’s house where they allegedly found a decomposing corpse said to be that of a man and other suspected human parts cut into different sizes.
The decomposing corpse was later said to have been identified as that of the cleric’s very close friend, Sulaiman, who according to sources, had complained of severe stomach ache after returning from an outing with the suspect on Wednesday last week.
Sulaiman reportedly died in a private hospital the following day and was buried same day [Thursday] in accordance with Islamic rites.
How his corpse resurfaced in the cleric’s house still remains a mystery to the people of the community, who have continued to express shock.
The suspect, however, escaped being lynched by irate members of the community as he fled through the back door of his house. But his father was not that lucky, as he was beaten, almost to a state of coma before being handed over to the police.
The building where the corpse and human body parts were found was pulled down by angry youths within an hour.
Numerous charms and fetish objects were also found inside the building, which allegedly belonged to the runaway cleric.
According to an eye witness, who pleaded anonymity, residents of the area had, for some time, been suspicious of the owner of the building, but could not confront him, owing to lack of concrete evidence.
During the search, you would not believe that we discovered decomposing human parts such as heads, legs, rotten bones, mutilated hands and fetish items, wrapped in white and red clothes, black soap, charms and amulets
He explained that a foul odour that had continuously oozed out of the building gave him away as residents, who could no longer withstand the putrid smell, mobilised themselves and forcibly entered into the property to conduct a search.
He said, “It was a gory sight my brother. For somedays now, we have lived with perpetual foul odour around that building and it was when we got tired of waiting to find out what was really going on that we decided to storm the building.
“During the search, you will not believe that we discovered decomposing human parts such as heads, legs, rotten bones, mutilated hands and fetish items, wrapped in white and red clothes, black soap, charms and amulets.”
The eyewitness confirmed that the suspected ritualist had since been on the run while his aged father, who narrowly escaped being lynched by the mob, had been undergoing interrogation with the police.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, Deputy Superintendent of Police Ajayi Okasanmi, also confirmed the incident.
He said some objects suspected to be human parts were recovered from the building before it was demolished by an angry mob, saying that police operatives had since been on the trail of the Islamic cleric.
“Arrest was made quite alright, but the situation is under control as a patrol team has been keeping surveillance in the area and we will carry out further investigations,” Okasanmi said.
