Akinrinlade
Ayodeji narrowly escaped being lynched. Photo: Facebook
A resident
of Ikorodu area of Lagos, Mr. Akinrinlade Ayodeji, has narrated how he narrowly
escaped being lynched by a mob that had mistaken him for a member of the reprehensible
cult, Badoo, which has been suspected of killing over 30 persons in the last 12
months.
In a
Facebook post, Ayodeji described how a simple act of going to fetch water at
7.30pm a few houses from his residence nearly cost him his life, as the residents
had mistaken a jerry can of water he was carrying for engine oil, said to be
one of the identifying tags of the Badoo cultists.
Entitled,
‘Ikorodu’s Badoo brouhaha: My story,’ Ayodeji said that on Monday, July 3, he
had returned home from work at about 5:21pm, and had taken a nap which
lasted till 7:39pm.
On waking
up, he discovered that he had no water, and decided to go get some water at a
nearby tank.
To his
surprise, he said, someone accosted him, demanding to know what he was doing in
the streets at that hour of the day, with a jerry can.
“Hey hey!
What are you coming here to do at this time?” Someone asked him; to which he
said he replied, “Sorry sir, I am actually here to fetch some water.”
The person
questioning him was rather uninterested in whatever explanation Ayodeji had,
and dealt him a slap across the face.
He wrote:
“Before I could finish explaining myself, I saw a very furious man and decided
to just turn back to my house. But before I could take three steps forward, I
just felt a big and several bangs on my face through the back.
“At this
point, I was lost, wondering if the world was ending today.
“Immediately,
I saw people gathered, asking in Yoruba, ‘Ki lo de, ki lo sele? (what
happened, what’s going on).”
Unlike the
gruesome fate that befell Chinedu, allegedly a comedian, who was lynched by a
mob in Ikorodu last weekend on the suspicion that he and two other victims were
Badoo cult members, Ayodeji had a distinct fortune of being identified by his
neighbours, effectively saving him from being beaten to a coma and then roasted
alive.
“To cut the
long story short, people attested that they know me, even asking the said baba
(his assailant), ‘Don’t you know him?’
“They all
apologised after several slaps and molestation initially, then I just carried
my gallon that someone else had helped fill with water, obviously out of pity,
then walked towards my house, entered my room, put off my already tattered
cloth, sat down and started imagining what just happened, hoping it was just a
dream, behold, it wasn’t, it was real!” the obviously shaken Ayodeji wrote.
He added
that a few minutes later while he was still busy pondering about what had just
happened, he heard some voices at the entrance to his apartment.
When he
opened the door, four elderly men that he suspected were landlords, alongside
the man that had raised the false alarm and one of his neighbours, expressed
deep apologies for what had just happened.
“They all
said they were sorry for the ugly incident, with the man that punished me particularly
holding me tight, just to show his level remorse.
“I almost
shed tears at that point, but I had to be a man. I told them to take things
easy, that two wrongs can never make a right,” Ayodeji wrote.
He confessed
that though he told them that he was okay, the beating he received was severe,
as several people slapped him repeatedly all at once, until someone identified
him as a resident.
He recalled
that his awful experience was reminiscent of that of a friend of his who was
lynched by a mob last Sunday at Odongunyan, when the individual was suspected
of being a Badoo cult member.
Reports say
Badoo cult gangs rub engine oil on their bodies whenever they go for
‘operations.’
They are
said to break their victims’ heads with grinding stone or pestle, while they
rape female victims.
On one
occasion, they were alleged to have fled with a baby after they had
reportedly killed the parents and siblings.
They are
also said to use white handkerchiefs to collect blood of their victims.
News has it
that members of the Badoo cult invade homes in the dead of the night,
during which they attack mainly families, killing everyone during each attack.
Odua Peoples
Congress leader, Gani Adams, claimed that reports available to his group
indicated that the cultists get paid between N250,000 and N1,000,000 for each
blood-soaked handkerchief submitted to their sponsors.
Adams added
that OPC was aware that “influential members of the society” were responsible
for sponsoring the attacks.
Meanwhile,
the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has charged traditional rulers in
Ikorodu to “wake up from their slumber by helping the government to nip in the
bud the rising wave of kidnapping and the Badoo menace in the state.”
See Ayodeji’s post:
No comments:
Post a Comment