On Saturday, May 5, the entire environs of Imalefalafia area of Ibadan was thrown into grief over the death of a 22-year-old lady who who was suspected to have fallen victim of ritual killers.
It was learnt that the young lady Tope Adenuga left home on Friday, May 4, saying she was going to vigil in a Cherubim and Seraphim church she started attending not quite long before the incident, but to everyone’s surprise, it was Tope’s corpse that was brought back home on Saturday.
Information gathered revealed that Tope collapsed in the church around 2.30a.m.while prayer was going on and started vomiting blood. She was revived and taken to a private hospital along Ososami road, from where she was referred to another hospital. Her church members rushed her to Oluyoro Catholic Hospital, Oke Offa, where she was being treated before she finally gave up on Saturday morning. Tope was said to have made efforts to respond on how she came about the sudden illness but each time she tried to speak, blood would start coming out of her mouth and nose.
Comments from neighbours indicated that the deceased was known to move with male friends whose identities were unknown as they always came in cars with tinted glass to pick her.
According to one of the deceased’s neighbour who pleaded anonymity, “I was sitting outside around 9.30p.m. when she received a call and she told me she was going to vigil. Within a twinkle of an eye, I saw an unregistered car with tinted glass parked in front of the house. She entered the car and the driver drove off but I could not recognise the people inside the car since the glass was tinted.”
Another source who claimed to be Tope’s close friend added: “I was in my husband’s house when I saw Tope’s call on my phone, I picked the call but all I could hear was groaning. I wondered what could be happening so I decided to call her back. When the phone rang, it was a man who picked it and he started raining curses on me, saying that I should not call the number again if I would not want my mother to cry over me. I told him that it was my friend’s phone and I should be allowed to speak with her, but he hung up on me. I was trying to call her back when my husband warned me not to call back so as to avoid that person’s curse.”
She added: “Tope was supposed to take me to church that very night but when I waited and could not see her, I decided to stay back at home.”
According to a young man who said he was in the church with Tope when she first collapsed, “we were about starting the vigil when she entered the church. As soon as we started, we were just singing when she started jerking like someone who had entered into the spirit realm but I noticed that her situation was far from that.
“Immediately, we offered prayer to her and she recovered thereafter. When it was around 4.00 a.m., we took her to a nearby hospital but she was rejected. We took her to another hospital where we were referred to Oluyoro hospital.