The police command in Lagos state says it has arrested a gang of 10 suspected ritualists, who specialise in killing people and selling their body parts to ritualists.

The command’s spokesperson, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, confirmed the arrest on Friday while parading them before journalists in Lagos.

Mr Hundeyin said that the leader of the gang, a 33-year-old man, Ademola Akinlosotu, used to exhume corpses from cemeteries and sell the parts to money ritualists.

He said those arrested included a community chief, an Ifa priest, an Osun priestess, an Islamic cleric and a trado-medicine practitioner.

He said the suspects were arrested through intelligence reports from members of the public.

Mr Hundeyin said that a report obtained by the police also revealed that the suspects usually lure people to their hide-out, adding that such people would never come out alive again.

He said exhibits of different human parts were recovered from the suspects.

He said the police were on the trail of other suspects.

The spokesperson said the suspects would be charged to court as soon as investigations were completed.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the parade, the leader of the gang, Mr Akinlosotu, also made some scary confessions.

He said he got the human parts from dead bodies buried at the cemeteries, before graduating to actual killings – a job he had been doing for years.

Mr Akinlosotu said he moved to killing people to harvest parts because his clients requested fresh parts rather than dead body parts.

He said while he and some members of the gang would do the killings, he would supply the parts.

Mr Akinlosotu said he usually supplied the parts to a 52-year-old man, Ahmed Wahab, aka Alfa Bororo, who operated from Badagry in Lagos state and Ogun, to supply his clients.

According to him, a fresh human head is sold at N45,000 or N50,000 while a dry human head sells between N30,000 and N35,000; heart for N70,000 and hands for N50,000.

Mr Akinlosotu also said that he only killed two persons, which included a friend he met through social media before he was arrested.

He said before they killed anyone, the herbalist would be contacted to consult an oracle to determine whether the killing would be successful or would bring trouble.

The suspect alleged that a traditional ruler in Badagry requested him to kill his son because the son was giving him problems.

He also said that the day they were to carry out the killing was the day the friend he met online visited him, and he was killed.

Mr Akinlosotu said that all he needed when he killed was the person’s head, the heart and the hands.

(NAN)