The Ogun State Police Command said it had arrested three members of a community vigilante group for the alleged murder of one Ahmed Obisanwo, a 400-level student of Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago-Iwoye.
The three suspects, who were paraded on Wednesday at Eleweran State Police headquarters, were said to have killed Ahmed and thrown his corpse into a river, after he was arrested by the group over cult related activities in Ijebu Igbo town.
Speaking with newsmen during the parade, the Ogun State Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, explained that the trio of Idowu Ayodele, 53, Segun Ogunsanwo, 53, and Akeem Salisu, 55, had invaded a hotel in Ijebu-Igbo area of the state on August 8, dispossessed lodgers of their valuables and seized two young men.
According to him, the suspects, who claimed that the two young men were cultists and arrested them during initiation, eventually released one of the boys and could not account for the whereabouts of the other one.
The CP informed that the suspects were arrested after Ahmed’s parents reported the case at the police station that the whereabouts of their son could not be accounted for by the suspects.
“These suspects went into a hotel and ordered everyone to lie down and dispossessed them of their valuables. They seized two people and didn’t return them. After a while, one of them came back and said he had escaped. When we asked him about the second person he taken with, he said he had been killed. It is six weeks today, that person has not returned.
“There was a complaint and we worked on that, which led to the arrest of these three people and the recovery of four locally made double barrelled guns and live cartridges. On further interrogation, they said the other person that was taken had been killed and the body had been thrown into a river. We asked them to show us the river, so that we can go there and conduct a search and recover his body”.
“One of them even claimed to be a member of So Safe Corps, but Corps commandant has outrightly denied that. One of the weapons recovered from them is painted in police color. They will be made to face the full wrath of the law”. Makama stated.
One of the suspects, Akeem Salisu, who spoke with newsmen, denied killing Ahmed. He said the vigilance group was commissioned by the community to rid it of cultists and thugs.
Salisu claimed that three other members of the group, who he said have run away, had carried out the raid on the hotel and arrested the suspected cultists.