A resident of Ikorodu area of Lagos, Mr. Akinrinlade Ayodeji has
narrated how he narrowly escaped being lynched by a mob that had
mistaken him for a member of the reprehensible cult, Badoo, which has
been suspected of killing over 30 persons in the last 12 months.
In a Facebook post, Ayodeji described how a simple act of going to
fetch water at 7.30pm a few houses from his residence nearly cost him
his life, as the residents had mistaken a jerry can of water he was
carrying for engine oil, said to be one of the identifying tags of the
Badoo cultists.
Entitled, ‘Ikorodu’s Badoo brouhaha: My story,’ Ayodeji said that
on Monday, July 3, he had returned home from work at about 5:21pm, and
had taken a nap which lasted till 7:39pm.
On waking up, he discovered that he had no water, and decided to go get some water at a nearby tank.
To his surprise, he said, someone accosted him, demanding to know
what he was doing in the streets at that hour of the day, with a jerry
can.
“Hey hey! What are you coming here to do
at this time?” Someone asked him; to which he said he replied, “Sorry
sir, I am actually here to fetch some water.”
The person questioning him was rather uninterested in whatever explanation Ayodeji had, and dealt him a slap across the face.
He wrote: “Before I could finish explaining myself, I saw a
very furious man and decided to just turn back to my house. But before I
could take three steps forward, I just felt a big and several bangs on
my face through the back.
“At this point, I was lost, wondering if the world was ending today.
“Immediately, I saw people gathered, asking in Yoruba, ‘Ki lo de, ki lo sele? (what happened, what’s going on).”
Unlike the gruesome fate that befell Chinedu, allegedly a comedian,
who was lynched by a mob in Ikorodu last weekend on the suspicion that
he and two other victims were Badoo cult members, Ayodeji had a distinct
fortune of being identified by his neighbours, effectively saving him
from being beaten to a coma and then roasted alive.
“To cut the long story short, people attested that they know
me, even asking the said baba (his assailant), ‘Don’t you know him?’
“They all apologised after several slaps and molestation
initially, then I just carried my gallon that someone else had helped
fill with water, obviously out of pity, then walked towards my house,
entered my room, put off my already tattered cloth, sat down and started
imagining what just happened, hoping it was just a dream, behold, it
wasn’t, it was real!” the obviously shaken Ayodeji wrote.
He added that a few minutes later while he was still busy pondering
about what had just happened, he heard some voices at the entrance to
his apartment.
When he opened the door, four elderly men that he suspected were
landlords, alongside the man that had raised the false alarm and one of
his neighbours, expressed deep apologies for what had just happened.
“They all said they were sorry for the ugly incident, with the
man that punished me particularly holding me tight, just to show his
level remorse.
“I almost shed tears at that point, but I had to be a man. I
told them to take things easy, that two wrongs can never make a right,” Ayodeji wrote.
He confessed that though he told them that he was okay, the beating
he received was severe, as several people slapped him repeatedly all at
once, until someone identified him as a resident.
He recalled that his awful experience was reminiscent of that of a
friend of his who was lynched by a mob last Sunday at Odongunyan, when
the individual was suspected of being a Badoo cult member.
Reports say Badoo cult gangs rub engine oil on their bodies whenever they go for ‘operations.’
They are said to break their victims’ heads with grinding stone or pestle, while they r*pe female victims.
On one occasion, they were alleged to have fled with a baby after they had reportedly killed the parents and siblings.
They are also said to use white handkerchiefs to collect blood of their victims.
News has it that members of the Badoo cult invade homes in the dead
of the night, during which they attack mainly families, killing
everyone during each attack.
Odua Peoples Congress leader, Gani Adams, claimed that reports
available to his group indicated that the cultists get paid between
N250,000 and N1,000,000 for each blood-soaked handkerchief submitted to
their sponsors.
Adams added that OPC was aware that “influential members of the society” were responsible for sponsoring the attacks.
Meanwhile, the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has charged traditional rulers in Ikorodu to “wake
up from their slumber by helping the government to nip in the bud the
rising wave of kidnapping and the Badoo menace in the state.”
