Ritualist, 2 Others Arrested With Fetish Materials

Police detectives in Asaba, Delta State, have arrested a suspected ritualist and two others for allegedly abducting two teenagers Ifunaya Onyia and Boniface Miracle, both 13-year-old natives of Onitsha, Anambra State. The alleged ritualist, identified as Chijioke Okonkwo, it was reliably gathered, had abducted the girls while they were walking along the Delta State Broadcasting Service Road, to an uncompleted building in the area where he attempted to use them for rituals. Narrating their ordeal, the victims said: “We were lured by him [Chijioke Okonkwo] from Onitsha where we were selling pure water; he has a store where he sells provision and other materials at the Onitsha Main Market. He said he wanted us to be his sales girls”. The girls said Okonkwo took them to an uncompleted building behind the bush path around the Broadcasting Service Road, where he allegedly used white powder to rub their faces and chanted incantations, while the other two suspects stood guard some ways off. The girls disclosed that when he was about to slaughter them, some passers-by raised the alarm and rushed to the scene, holding him down while they went to get the police. Speaking to newsmen, the public relations officer of the state police command, DSP Celestina Kalu, confirmed the arrest of the suspect and assured the public that no stone will be left unturned this festive period to bring all forms of criminals to book, disclosing that the police discovered some fetish items in calabashes and different concoctions from the other suspects. Kalu, however, revealed that, upon interrogation, the trio confessed to the crime but insisted that they were no ritualists but were only trying to get the girls to go help out with the house chores of a woman who suffered a fatal accident in Okija, Anambra State.