Lagos – A 24-year-old female Dubai returnee who was been abducted at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Ikeja, Lagos State by an Islamic cleric for five months has been rescued by the Police in Ogun State.
The self-acclaimed ‘Alfa’, Olalekan Anifowoshe was learnt to have kept the victim, in his rented apartment in the Atan-Ota area of Ogun state and was allegedly having free sexual intercourse with her throughout the period, in pretence of doing holy cleanliness.
The cat was let out of bag recently when a neighbor of the victim at Surulere travelled to Atan-Ota and spotted the woman sometime in May and informed her family.
After confirmation by a family team who travelled to the village, the case was reported to the Police at the Onipanu Police Division, leading to the arrest of the 42-year-old Alfa.
According to source, the victim and the 42-year-old suspect were neighbours in the Surulere area of Lagos, where his wife and three children also resided with him.
The rescued woman disclosed that she had earlier consulted ‘Alfa’ in 2013 for help over a spiritual attack before travelling to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, “When I received a call from Alfa on January 11, 2016, asking me to come back to Nigeria, it was then that I lost my senses and returned to Nigeria immediately”.
According to her, “Alfa sleep with me for at least 10 times, and anytime I demand to see my parents, Alfa will beat me up and boast that I had reached my final destination. Sometime in 2013, I had a dream that a man made love to me. A friend introduced me to him and he gave me a piece of white cloth with Arabic inscriptions to cover my body whenever I wanted to sleep, which I used. Some months later, I travelled to Dubai”.
She claimed, “On January 11, he called me on the telephone to come home. It was like a spell. I packed my things and arrived in Lagos the following day without telling my parents. He picked me at the airport and took me to his apartment in the Aboru area. After some time, he relocated me to Atan-Ota, where he was eventually arrested. He beat me anyhow and slept with me”.
“Sometime in May, he took me to a river for a ritual. While he left me to do something inside the bush, I saw someone I knew. The person informed my father that I was already in Nigeria, but in captivity. My father was shocked because he thought I was in Dubai.”
Alfa however owned up to the allegations in his statement to the police, promising to refund all the money collected from the victim a cash sum of about N480,000 and her jewellery valued at N250,000.
In his confessional statement to the Police, the suspect said apart from prayers, he also used traditional means to help solve his clients’ problems, saying “I am married with three children. The woman and I knew each other in Surulere, where my family members reside. As an Islamic cleric, I help people facing problems with prayers and it works. That was how I got to know her”.
He confessed, “It is true I cast a spell on her to come back to Nigeria. She was living with me and I slept with her occasionally. I only borrowed the money from her, I will refund it.”
Confirming the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer, Ogun State Command, DSP Muyiwa Adejobi said “the suspect had been charged to court after a thorough investigation. The command has no tolerance for such inhuman case and we will always fish out the perpetrators”.
