Revelations coming from the arrested Yahoo boys (internet fraudsters/ritualists), who allegedly murdered a 300-level Mass Communication student of Delta State University, Elozino Ogege, are quite alarming as they confessed to joining security agency purposely to kidnap students for ritualists.
Elozino was abducted and killed three days after. While the police had three suspects in custody about 72 hours after, the alleged mastermind, a Ghanaian-based internet fraudster, reportedly slumped and died.
The suspects were said to have collaborated with some private security guards engaged by DELSU and kidnapped Elozino right inside the campus.
One of the security guards, a suspected Yahoo boy and ritualist, arrested by the police said; “I was posted by my security supervisor (also in police custody) deliberately to arrange the abduction of female students for Yahoo boys.” A source said Elozino, 22, looking for accommodation in the school’s lodging facility, was contacted on phone by the security guard and that was the last time those who knew her on campus saw her last. “The Elozino matter did not come to the police as death of somebody, it came as a case of missing person. The mother of the deceased reported she was missing and, quite unlike her, had not made contact; so she smelt foul play. “That is what set the Abraka Division in search of her.
The police got their breakthrough in the case with the tracking of her phone to a security guard through our tracking device. As you would expect, he (security guard) was in denial of how the phone got to him and we sought to see the person he said sold the phone to him.
“We got the second suspect through a search and it was denial all through, but we knew that hardened criminals do not easily own up. They will never own up until you get incontrovertible facts and do proper interrogation.
“The second (suspected) fraudster confessed that this was not his first time as he had been involved in four previous cases. He identified a 62-year-old herbalist as the person they took the body parts to, and, when we got to him through our undercover network, he was in denial. Immediately we got information on where his home is located, we laid ambush, watched the stream of people coming in and out of his home in Warri. “Detectives bid their time, acted as if they were potential customers in targeting him until they were certain they were not going to lose him. Ab initio, he said he did not know them, but later he owned up that they had once brought human parts to him, which he destroyed. “The suspected mastermind owned two buildings in Abraka. The gang actually established contact with the family of Elozino and that is what made the police to have the impression, at first, that the mission was abduction. However, right now, it is a case of gruesome murder. “From their confessions, they had done their escapades earlier in Oghara. We arrested five of them, even the small girl, but we are not holding it against her because we see her as a victim used by the mastermind. The little girl is his sister making it six”. According to the PPRO, the alleged mastermind used the minor in the telephone conversation with the parents of Elozino, probably to assure the parents that all was well. “We did not get Eloziono’s remains until the early hours of last Sunday at the outskirts of Abraka, right there in one of the farms, a hidden spot that had a tree.
“The anti-kidnapping team, joined by the Special Armed Robbery Squad, SARS, and others, got to where they buried her, and what was evident after the remains were exhumed was that it was not something that happened overnight. “It took some time before the police saw the manner they plucked her eyes and, while questioning the suspects, we got other harrowing tales. Even policemen were horrified at man’s inhumanity to man”.
The security guard, Onos, said to have arranged the kidnapping, confirmed that he was recruited for the purpose by his supervisor, who vehemently denied the allegation. He said, “I was contacted by Desmond (a Yahoo boy also in custody) and another to provide a female student for Yahoo rituals. Therefore, when Elozino approached me that she was looking for accommodation, I saw it as a good opportunity. I called Desmond who told me to tell her to come back the next day. “The next day, they brought a Toyota Corolla car and when Elozino came, they used something on her face, which made her unconscious. We took her to a bush where we first plucked her eyes while she was still alive. She was even crying and begging us to forgive her and let her go, but we plucked the other eye, removed her breasts and heart before she died”. The second suspected fraudster, Desmond, who identified the herbalist, said he was the one they took human parts to, to make charms for them so that “when we speak to white men on phone, they will do anything we ask them to do.”
As the police celebrate their swiftness in apprehending Elozino’s suspected killers, ritualists are not resting. Residents of Asaba, the state capital, woke up, last Wednesday, to behold the remains of an unidentified young girl along Asaba-Benin Expressway, near the Summit Junction, with her vital organs removed. A police patrol team later removed the corpse. An eyewitness said her killers removed her breasts and private organs.
The next day, Thursday, at Oghara, suspected killers butchered a 12-year-old at Scott Road, close to Okwemeva Junction in Ogharaefe. She was said to have screamed for help like Elozino, but residents in the area were afraid to come out. Her head was hacked off her body. A villager, Julie, said, “The incident happened at about 5.00 am, few poles away from the Council Secretariat. Only God knows where she was coming from, but people said they heard her shouting, that they should open door for her, that some persons were after her until she went quiet. When we woke, we saw this” (pointing to the corpse).
DELSU management is calling on students to be security conscious and to refrain from all activities and relationships that could jeopardize their safety.”
