‘Blood spirit’ told me to attack nursing mother and behead her baby –Murder suspect (photo)

                                           

To 32-year-old Bashir Ibrahim, who is currently being held at the Department of Criminal Investigation, Eleweran, Abeokuta, Ogun State, for raping a nursing mother and beheading her baby, he is nothing more than a helpless victim of what he called a ‘blood spirit’ that possessed him and pushed him into the crime.

The Sokoto State indigene, who said he had lived in Ofada in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State for seven years working as labourer, tried as much as he could to prove that his crime was not premeditated in  a conversation with our source on Tuesday.

Chatty and jovial, Ibrahim could have passed for a suspect who had been accused of a mere street brawl, as his mien and the way he narrated the incident contrasted sharply with the infanticide and attempted murder that he has been accused of.

“I don’t understand ‘paper English,’ I can only speak pidgin,” the man clarified before delving into his narration.

“Ah, this spirit that possessed me did not do well at all. I just wanted to sleep with her. I did not intend to rape her,” he began.

Ibrahim told our source that the woman, who cannot be named because of the sensitivity of the case, was his neighbour.

He said he had known the woman, who is a food vendor, for years and that in fact, they lived within a walking distance of each other.

Ibrahim said, “I used to buy Tuwo (a Hausa staple food) from her. But that day (Saturday, April 12, 2014), I approached her and told her I wanted to sleep with her. I told her I would pay her N500 but she said that was too small. But when I agreed to pay N1,000, she agreed.

“When it was night, I followed her to an uncompleted building not too far from where we live and I told her to put down her baby. She was carrying the boy on her back at the time.

“Immediately I started to have sex with her, the blood spirit just entered me. All I could see was blood. The spirit immediately pushed me to take the dagger I had on me and I started stabbing her.”

Our correspondent interrupted him and asked why he took a dagger there if he didn’t intend to kill her in the first place.

But he said the dagger was one item he normally took around with him. He said because of the job he did, he used it as hunting knife anytime he worked in the bush.

Ibrahim continued, “She screamed as I started stabbing her. I did not know what I was doing. The woman is at least twice my size. I could not have been able to pin her down if not because I was possessed.

“The woman was screaming as I tried to kill her. But she later escaped and left her baby behind. I looked at the baby on the ground and he was crying. The spirit again pushed me and I held the baby down. I slaughtered him as we normally slaughter rams. I left the body there and wrapped the head in a nylon bag.”

Still possessed by the ‘blood spirit,’ Ibrahim told our source that he went home, said his prayers and slept off.

The head of the infant he had severed was safely tucked under a bush close to his house.

He woke up the following day, he narrated, still possessed by the demon.

“By the time I woke up on Sunday morning, I was still seeing the blood. I went to take the head where I put it. There was no way you would see it and know I was carrying a human head. I wrapped it in two nylon bags and went to Mowe to take a bus to Ibadan,” Ibrahim said.

He said he went to Bode in Ibadan, a place known for its market of variety of ingredients for herbal medicine.

Ibrahim said, “I went to a woman who sells ingredients of herbal medicine in the market and pretended that I wanted to buy pile concoction. But she noticed that I was carrying a nylon bag and asked what it contained.

“I told the woman it contained a child’s head for sale. She first expressed shock but later offered to buy the head for N120,000 but the woman said she would pay N3,000 first and that I should come back the following day for N117,000. But I did not like that. I returned the money and took back the head.

“I did not know what to do with the head at that moment and I went to hide it in a bush. I came back to Ofada and by Monday morning, the spirit was gone. I saw the blood no more. I have three children myself. They live with their mother in Sokoto. I would not have ordinarily killed a child if I was not possessed.”

But as the murderous ‘spirit’ left Ibrahim, the police closed in on him.

He said he got home on Monday only to be told that the police were looking for him.

“I did not want to run away because I know I was not myself when I committed the crime,” the suspect said.

In 30 minutes, the interview was over. It was time to take his photograph. Ibrahim still posed and smiled.

But the police have said his story was a carefully crafted pack of lies.

A policeman who was part of the team investigating the case said the mother of the slain child had a deep knife cut on her neck where Ibrahim had tried to slaughter her.

“She was actually the target. The woman was lucky to have escaped but unfortunately left her child behind.

But the spokesperson for the Ogun State Police Command, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi, said whether Ibrahim was possessed or not, the fact he would face prosecution for the murder he had committed.

He said it was not true that ritual killing was on the rise in the state or that the state was becoming the ritual killing headquarters of the South-West.

Adejobi said, “This kind of incidents are not on the increase as they are projected in newspaper reports. Some people are being killed in jungle justice on accusation that they are ritual killers but by the time you finish investigation, you realise such people are killed without evidence of what they are accused of.

“People just take laws into their hands and kill people and make noise about it. They project what is not there. If you want to prove things like that, you need empirical facts. Ogun State is not a den of criminals.”

He said the police succeeded in recovering the child’s severed head despite series of deception by Ibrahim because of diligence.

He said, “We were committed, and tactful in our interrogation. We would not have succeeded otherwise. He initially took us to Owode, we did not see the head but we were not angry. We believed we could work on him. We did not not torture him because we have stopped that long ago. We played along and he took us to Ofada and our men, armed with cutlasses, started labouring to clear the bush just to get the head.

“We suffered and did not succeed until he decided to take us to Ibadan. He took us to a woman he mentioned during questioning, but we did not see the woman either. He later took us to where he kept the head. It is a plus to us because we did the job the way it should be done.”

Adejobi said the physical health of the mother of the baby had improved following the attack but added that she might require extensive treatment for psychological trauma having been raped and seen her child killed.

Ibrahim’s case brings into focus the issue of human body parts sales, which has been in the news in the last few months.

A den of kidnappers was discovered in Soka area of Ibadan on March 22, 2013 in which 20 decomposing bodies were found. It was said that the victims were killed while their body parts were sold off  for ritual purposes.