Nigeria: A mortuary attendant, aged 55, Kushimo Lukman, who was caught with a human head chopped off from a child’s dead body in a cemetery, said he was to receive N15,000 payment for the task from the native doctors who gave him the assignment.
Lukman, who was among the wrongdoers arrested by the Ogun State Police Command last Tuesday, was caught by men of the So Safe Corps around 6:30 am while they were on a round in the Lantoro area of Abeokuta.
During the press briefing, the state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Abimbola Oyeyemi, who talked on behalf Lanre Bankole, the state Commissioner of Police, said that Lukman, a.k.a Werepe, was caught coming out of Oke-Yidi cemetery with a sack.
As per Oyeyemi, “he (Lukman) was halted, and when searched, a child’s head was found in the sack he was carrying. Initial investigation revealed that the child’s corpse was brought to the cemetery a day earlier for burying through the suspect’s help, who later came back to sever the head.”
Nigerian officials’ investigations disclosed that two local doctors, named Fakorede and Awurela, had taken the help of Lukman to get human head for a ritual meant for fraudsters called as ‘Yahoo boys’.
Awurela was the intermediate between Fakorede and Lukman and had negotiated with Lukam the payment that was to be made after he delivered the head to them.
He was captured shortly before the Thursday press briefing.
In an interview, Lukman, a staff of a local government mortuary, narrated how he got the head he severed.
He said, “A couple asked me to help bury their deceased six-year-old child in a graveyard at Yidi, Lantoro area on Monday, April 25. Before then, two local doctors, Awurela and Fakorede, had asked me to help them get a human head they required to perform a ritual for Yahoo guys.”
“After burying the child, his parents went back to Ibadan in Oyo State, and I went back to the cemetery at around 6 am the following day, disinterred the corpse, cut off its head and put it in the sack, heading towards Awurela and Fakorede’s house. But I was captured by vigilantes in the OkeIlewo area of Abeokuta. I was taken to the police.”
Lukman also said that before this, the two doctors asked him to get them some human flesh, to which he decided to purchase pork and present it to them as human flesh.
“I was paid N5,000. I went to purchase pork for them. But when they completed the ritual for the Yahoo boys, they were told that it was not adequate as the flesh used was not that of human.”
“They also told me to get body fluid from a corpse, but I said I could not get such. It was after this that I was asked to get the head. They said they would pay me N15,000 after bringing it to them.”
