Sometime, three years ago, the head of Ago Oyinbo Community in Okitipupa area of Ondo State, Chief Moyebbi Okeowo, met about 15 persons under the guise that they were movie producers looking for a remote community to shoot a film.
The village head volunteered a place for them and even personally spoke with the owner of one of the abandoned mud houses to allow the supposed producers carry out their film shooting.
After six months, the visitors came back to the village head to show him some film scenes supposedly done while in the community.
*Chief Okeowo
Okeowo bought their story, hook, line and sinker.
However, the visitors had an ulterior motive and the actual reason they chose the community was because it was remotely located and would not attract attention to them.
For three years, they had a field day carrying out their activities.
The cat was reportedly let out of the bag when some youths discovered stench.
It was gathered that the youths, still not suspecting any foul play, thought some villagers might have defecated to warrant the offensive odour.
However, some days later, a report was lodged by a youth that when he came out of his house at about 2am one particular day, he saw some elderly persons dragging a man into the building used by the supposed movie producers
He was reported to have claimed that when he saw the people struggling to drag the man into the building, he thought it was part of the said film they were in the community to shoot.
According to a police source, the youth became curious when he did not see anybody carrying a camera and t hat it was still dark and that the person was blindfolded.
The following day, villages youths mobilised and invaded the building.
Irked by what they saw, the youths pulled down the mud building while six suspects were later arrested.
Hell was let loose as the youths went wild and protested even to neighbouring communities looking for some of the people living in the building who had escaped.
The youths reportedly dragged the community head and other elders to the scene.
It was later learnt that the mud house had been converted to a kidnappers’ den by the fake movie producers.
*The demolished ‘shrine’
*Items recovered from the ‘shrine’
It turned out that those who came to see Okeowo three years ago belonged to a syndicate which kidnapped people and butchered them to sell the parts to buyers.
Sunday Vanguard gathered that their mode of operation was that when a victim is kidnapped, he is brought to the den. A source familiar with the case said if negotiation with the family of the abducted person turned unsatisfactory, the victim would be slaughtered and the parts sold to buyers.
Items reportedly found at the site, located few kilometres from Benin-Ore-Ijebu-Ode Expressway, included cow horns, different types of clothes reportedly belonging to victims of the alleged kidnappers, palm fronds, bottles of gin, calabashes, and, ‘Ghana must go’ bags.
The community head of the Ago Oyinbo, Okeowo, while speaking with Sunday Vanguard, said that the den came to being in 2012 when the suspects came to him to beg for space in the village which they wanted to use as location to shoot film.
On the request, the community head said he instructed somebody to take the people to the owner of the land.
Okeowo said: “When they came to me to beg for a piece of land to shoot their film, I told them I was not the owner of the land and I took them to the brother of the landlord of the land who then took them to the wife of the landlord in Akure.
“ So I learnt they were authorised by the wife of the landlord.
“When I did not know what they were using the land for, I told their leader to go and report their activities to the police and he later informed me
that he had done so.”
The community head stated that he was unaware of the nefarious activities of the suspects until he got the information that they were using human beings for sacrifice on the land.
Sunday Vanguard gathered that two security guards of a secondary school in the area were arrested by the police for conspiracy.
The Principal of Community Grammar
School, Kajola , Mr Joseph Edosama, confirmed that two of his security guards had been arrested for conspiring with the suspected kidnappers .
Ondo State police authorities frowned at the activities of the suspects in the community for three years. The police spokesperson in the state, DSP Wole Ogodo, said the authorities were informed by the Duty Officer at Aiyetoro that some youths arrested six suspected kidnappers/ ritualists.
The police spokesman gave the name of the arrested suspects as Omotayo Kayode, Stephen Adeyoki, Morokole Kolawole, Fasola Salami, Adeboye Olutemi and Ayelabola Mariam. Ogodo said the suspects had been moved to the police headquarters in Akure, the state capital, because of the sensitive nature of the crime while investigation had commenced.
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