Three others were also arrested and charged to court for urging people to support the call for a sovereign Yoruba Nation, despite the fact that right to self-determination is a fundamental and inalienable human right.
OSOGBO, Nigeria – Seven suspects have been arrested for selling human parts and water used to bathe corpses in Osun State, South-West Nigeria, police said.
Those arrested included two mortuary attendants: Johnson Daniel, 43, and Adetunji Okunade, 42, according to a statement by Osun State Police Command’s spokesman Emmanuel Giwa-Alade.
Giwa-Alade, who listed the other suspects as Olaniyan Azeez, Balogun Temitope, Oladapo Hammed, Kazeem Rasaq, and Asaka Rauf, said they were arrested following credible information from a concerned individual that Daniel, a mortuary attendant at Ipetu-Ijesa, was selling remains of corpses deposited at the mortuary where he worked to native doctors.
“The suspects used these remains obtained from the mortuary attendant (Johnson Daniel) for various ritual purposes. Daniel also confessed that he conspired with another mortuary attendant, Adetunji Okunade, to sell remnants of water used to bathe corpses to interested native doctors,” the police spokesman said. “During the investigation, a search was conducted at the residences of these suspects, leading to the recovery of fragments of substances suspected to be human skulls at the homes of Asaka Rauf and Oladapo Hammed, while a female pant and a notebook containing instructions on ritual practices were recovered from Balogun Temitope Asimiyu’s residence.”
Nigeria is presently grappling with a sinister phenomenon that has already claimed countless lives and left families devastated.
Ritual killing, driven by the belief that human body parts can be used for sudden wealth and power to manipulate and control, has become a scary reality in the country. This heinous practice, which is usually glossed over as a folktale until one falls victim, is an affront to human dignity and a blight on our collective conscience.
Recent data suggests that the problem is escalating. According to the National Human Rights Commission, over 200 reported cases of ritual killings occurred in Nigeria between 2018 and 2020. The victims are often vulnerable individuals, including children, women, and the elderly. The perpetrators, often fueled by greed and misguided beliefs, prey on innocent lives, leaving families and communities shattered.
It is important to note that ritual killings are a complex issue, and no single factor can fully explain their occurrence. Addressing the social state of the perpetrators requires a comprehensive approach that involves education, economic empowerment, cultural sensitisation, and governance reform.
Poverty, unemployment, and a lack of education create an environment where desperate individuals are preyed upon by unscrupulous ritualists.
Some individuals believe that human organs and body parts possess spiritual powers that can bring lasting wealth, success, and protection. This belief is perpetuated by false narratives and superstitions by dishonest individuals.
Giwa-Alade also said that three people were arrested for canvassing support for the Yoruba Nation in the state.
According to the police spokesman, one Oluwafemi Fagbuyi was picked up at Obada Market in Ikire, where he was addressing people, urging his audience “to denounce their allegiance to Nigeria as a nation.” Fagbuyi said that Nigeria ended in 2014 after 100 years of amalgamation and displayed the Yoruba Nation’s flag in the process.
Giwa-Alade said the case was transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department after a preliminary investigation.
He said through diligent investigation, Joy Faseyiku, 63, and Alabede Janet, 64, were arrested in Osogbo and Ikire, respectively, in connection with what the police spokesman branded as “crime”, despite the fact that right to self-determination is a fundamental and inalienable human right.
“The investigation has been concluded, and the suspects have been charged to the Federal High Court accordingly,” the police spokesman said.
The right to self-determination is a fundamental and inalienable human right. It is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, the International Covenants of Human Rights (common Article 1) and the Covenant of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.
Essentially, the right to self-determination is the right of a people to determine its own destiny. In particular, the principle allows a people to choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development. Exercise of this right can result in a variety of different outcomes ranging from political independence through to full integration within a state.
On January 1, 1914, Lord Frederick Lugard, the governor of both the Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, signed a document consolidating the two, thereby creating the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Forty-six years later in 1960, Nigeria became an independent state.
Anniversaries are times for reflection, and given that today, just over 104 years after amalgamation, the country is still grappling with its national identity and a reanimated separatist movement, it is worth reflecting on how exactly Nigeria became Nigeria.
Before Europeans arrived in the territory that is now Nigeria, a number of different civilizations existed whose presence is still felt today. For example, in the north, Islam was predominant. In the nineteenth century, there were two Islamic empires, the Sokoto Caliphate and the Bornu Empire. To the southwest lay numerous Yoruba city-states that generally had in common animist religion and were only sometimes united. To the southwest was an Igbo kingdom, Nri, and a collection of semi-autonomous towns and villages in the Niger River delta. Such regions were linguistically, religiously, and politically distinct.
While other colonial powers, such as the Portuguese, became involved in the region by way of the slave trade as early as the fifteenth century, the British arrived in force only in the eighteenth century. It was not until 1861 that they formally occupied their first Nigerian territory, Lagos, in a bid to protect Christian converts and trading interests, and to further their anti-slavery campaign. In 1884, the British occupied what would later become the Southern Protectorate and the Northern Protectorate piecemeal from 1900 to 1903. By 1903, the British controlled the territory that comprises modern-day Nigeria, but as three separate administrative blocks.
As early as 1898, the British considered combining the then-three protectorates to reduce the administrative burden on the British and allow the rich south to effectively subsidize the much less economically prosperous north. (The Lagos colony was later incorporated into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate for budgetary reasons). This is what Lord Lugard was referring to in his infamous description of how a marriage between the “rich wife of substance and means” (the south) and the “poor husband” (the north) would lead to a happy life for both. Some have suspected that Lugard was also referring to the political supremacy of the north over the south. The name “Nigeria” was coined by the future Lady Lugard in an 1897 London Times article.
With Lord Lugard’s arbitrary conception of Nigeria in mind, one can begin to see the many and varied problems colonialism created in Nigeria, across West Africa, and around the world. Not least among these problems, for Nigeria in particular, was the problem of a unifying national identity. It is no wonder that diverse peoples, forcibly united into single states, sometimes turn to separatism. Contemporary examples range from Biafra (Nigeria), to Ambazonia (Cameroon), to Somaliland (Somalia), and to Azawad (Mali).