Azubuike Ebi, a brother to a 25-year-old man, Eje Ebi, who was allegedly hacked to death by a cobbler, Adesina Osinowo, has narrated how his sibling was murdered.
Eje Ebi’s was murdered at Kokoro Abu Roundabout, Ikorodu
Azubike said:
“I brought him to stay with me in Ikorodu because of the killings in Jos.His wife and kid went to stay in our village in Afikpo North, Ebonyi State.
He chose to sell fairly-used clothes at a motor park in Ikorodu and was making money.On Thursday, he woke up very early to buy goods that he would sell because he had run out of stock.That was when Osinowo, who had been monitoring his movement, attacked him on the road and used machete to cut him in the head and hand. He also abandoned his corpse at the roundabout.”
It was gathered that the suspect reported himself to security men, with blood stains all over his clothes.
Angry residents reportedly swooped on him and would have lynched him, but for the intervention of community elders who handed him over to the police.
The Public Relations Officer of the Igbo Council of Chiefs, Ikorodu, Chief Ibe Onyike, said he suspected that Eje was killed for a ritual purpose.
Onyike said the Igbo community in Ikorodu wanted to start a riot on the day of the incident, but he called for calm.
He said,
“This is not the first time they will kill people in that roundabout, especially strangers.Every morning, you wake up to see freshly slaughtered goats and fowls.That spot serves fetish purpose for the indigenes of this area.After Eje was slaughtered there, more than 400 people gathered and wanted to start a riot that could have consumed Ikorodu, but I told my people to exercise patience.If things don’t change for the better, we may not continue to sit down and look.”
He claimed that the deceased’s phones and money were no longer on him by the time the family recovered the corpse.