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:
PUNCH
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