Kafilat Lateef was a young woman of 36 years.
Widowed five years ago and left with three children,
she must have felt the absence of a companion which
made her yield to the love overtures of Gbenga Taiwo,
then a plank seller at Bodija market, Ibadan. Their paths
had crossed over two years ago, as she was also a
trader in foodstuffs at the same market.
Happy that she had found love again, Kafilat put in all
she had into the relationship. Her family members were
also happy that she was looking bright again. Putting
her trust in the man she had had intimacy with several
times since their relationship started, Kafilat did not
think twice when Taiwo called her on January 19 ,
inviting her to Oyo town, where he had relocated since
2012. She returned to Ibadan on January 20 and went
back to Oyo on January 21. He reportedly told her to
come for the N50,000 he promised her.
Happy that she would be seeing her lover again, she
went to Oyo, and when her sister called her later, she
told her that she was with Taiwo at Idi Ope area of
Oyo. She was given food and drinks, which she took
with happiness, not knowing that she was drinking to
her own death. Unknown to her, her drink had been
laced with drug, which sent her to sleep, from where
she slipped to death.
Information gathered from her lover, Taiwo, who had
been arrested along with four others in connection with
Kafilat’s death, revealed that immediately she became
unconscious, the loverboy and his friends, Afeez
Kareem and Lukman Ganiyu, who had already planned
her death, clubbed her on the head with a dagger, after
which they put a kolanut in her mouth and buried her
in a shallow grave already dug for the purpose.
The act was carried out in a house where Ganiyu was
working as a security guard.
Source learnt that Taiwo was hellbent on becoming
wealthy, not minding the means through which that
would be achieved. He had reportedly approached an
Islamic cleric, Mohammed Saheed, that he was
interested in money ritual. Saheed claimed that he told
Gbenga that he could not do such but gave him an
alternative which could also yield money if done.
Saheed reportedly told him to put a kolanut in the
mouth of the corpse of an elderly man or woman and
bring it the following day after the kolanut must have
dropped from the corpse’s mouth. To quicken the
process, Gbenga decided to employ the services of
prostitutes which he would kill to achieve his aim.
“However, when I approached prostitutes, I could not
afford what they said I would pay if they should sleep in
my house overnight. That was why I decided to make
use of one of my numerous female friends,” Taiwo said.
He further confessed that he tried two other lovers. He
gave the names of his other lovers as Mama Iroko who
came to him from Iroko, a surburb of Oyo town, and
Mama Dada, a trader at Gbagi market whom he invited
from Ibadan.
He disclosed that while Mama Iroko did not sleep after
her drink was laced with drug, Mama Dada suspected
his motive, especially when she noticed the shallow
grave that was dug. According to him, “she did not
sleep throughout the night and when it was daytime,
she asked me whether it was good for me to think evil
towards her. She left thereafter.”
Unfortunately, Kafilat became the victim, as she fell
asleep after her drink was laced with drug. The
following morning after she was buried, her suspected
killers went to the graveside to take the kolanut as
expected but to their consternation, there was none.
They scrapped the earth off the remains and saw the
kolanut still in the mouth of the corpse.
When the trio saw that their plan had not worked, they
reportedly decided to dismember her remains after
severing the head. They allegedly burnt the pieces and
buried them in another shallow grave by a dumpsite
behind the house where the dastardly act was
committed. Taiwo confessed to the police that he took
the head to a herbalist, one Adeyemi Adedokun a.k.a.
Baba Agbadu to use it for money ritual for him.
Adedokun, however, denied being given the head,
though he admitted that Taiwo brought the head to his
house.
Also, Mohammed Saheed from Ilesa-Baruba in Kwara
State, whom Taiwo alleged to have asked him to bring
kolanut, denied telling him to kill someone, saying he
was only tring to help. Saheed, who said he was a
Quranic teacher, told Source , that Taiwo came to him
for money ritual but claimed that he told him he was not
into such things.
Saheed added that Taiwo also brought his friends Afeez
and Lukman, who also wanted to do charms for
authority and favour respectively.
According to Saheed, “I told him what our forefathers
used to do with kolanut from the mouth of an elderly
dead person, saying that if this is done, it would be
found by the graveside by the following day.
“ I also told him that the deceased’s spirit would try to
resist the kolanut being taken but if it could be forcefully
taken, it would be used for a charm that would be
bringing any fortune from wherever one may want.
“Three days after, he came back with the kolanut but
told me that he did not find the kolanut by the
graveside, so he had to exhume the corpse to take it.
“I sent him away that I would not be involved in such a
thing because I had already told him that the kolanut
should not be used on exhumed corpse, an accident
victim or someone deliberately murdered.”
Sunday Tribune further gathered that Taiwo was a
wanted suspect in Oyo State Police Command in
relation with cases of robbery in which he was
involved. He was said to have abandoned his wife and
only child, relocating to Oyo from Ibadan immediately
he knew there was a manhunt for him.
Police sources also told Tribune that Taiwo’s father had
already disowned him as a result of the robbery cases
he was allegedly involved in, unknown to him that he
would still commit another crime. The father, Mr Joseph
Taiwo, is said to be the pastor of God’s Foundation
Church at Jakan area of Agbowo, Ibadan.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of the
State Criminal Investigation Department, Iyaganku who
is currently investigating the case, Mrs Janet Agbede,
told Sunday Tribune that policemen comprising of Oyo
SARS operatives, detectives from CID and Durbar
Division set to work when Kafilat’s family reported the
case of their missing relation, after efforts to locate
Kafilat proved abortive. The family members had told
the police that two days after Kafilat left for her lover’s
place in Oyo, her line was not going through.
They added that they later received a call from Kafilat’s
line telling them that she had an accident in Lagos and
was hospitalised in a general hospital but was
disappointed when all efforts to locate Kafilat in any
Lagos hospital proved abortive.
Describing the act of the suspects as callous and
despicable, Mrs Agbede, advised women to be wary of
men they regard as lovers so that they would not fall
victim to evil-minded persons. Tribune gathered that a
pathologist has told police that the charred remains of
the deceased would have to be taken abroad for
autopsy and DNA. The cost was put at N1 million.
Culled from Tribune