Facts have emerged on how a 20-year-old female student of the Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH), Toluwalase Kembi, was allegedly murdered for rituals in Ikorodu. The deceased, who was said to be awaiting industrial training, met her sad end when she reportedly visited her boyfriend who, according to report, had claimed to have been paid N2million to carry out the heinous crime.
The boyfriend, Owolabi Yusuf, a 33-year-old man also known as alfa, is said to be in the custody of the Elere Police Division in the Agege area of the State, where the matter was reported by the family of the deceased. According to the report gathered, Toluwalase, who was reported to be living with her parents on Orile Road, TabonTabon, Agege, until her death, had gone to sleep over in Yusuf’s place in the Ladega area of Ikorodu, on July 28, 2020, when she was allegedly clubbed to death by her boyfriend, Yussuf, and her body reportedly cut into pieces for ritual purposes. Her remains ware yet to be recovered by the police as at the time of filing this report.
However, Police at Elere division reportedly arrested Yusuf in the third week of August upon fleeing to Ilorin, Kwara State, after allegedly carrying out the act.
The suspect reportedly confessed to the Police that he connived with three others, including a herbalist named Owonikoko, to kill the 20-year-old student with a pestle during her visit. The three accomplices to the crime are said to be at large. The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Muyiwa Adejobi, was reported to have confirmed the incident and also assured that efforts were being intensified to apprehend the three fleeing accomplices.
The family said Toluwalase, who had just completed National Diploma, should have proceeded for Iindustrial Training (IT) but for the outbreak of the COVID -19 pandemic. “When she did not return home, we thought she went missing; we didn’t know she had been murdered and her body cut into pieces”, her father, Oluwatoyin Kembi, a government retiree, lamented in his reaction to Toluwalase’s murder.
Meanwhile, the deceased’s elder sister, Abimbola, while narrating the events that led to her murder, said: “On July 28, Toluwalase, my mummy and l were at home discussing. Minutes later, her phone rang and she picked the phone and went outside to receive the call. The next thing, she came back, took her bag and said she was going to see her friend in Ikorodu. In the evening, her fiance, named Segun, called us and said Tolu called him that she was going to cook for someone in Ikorodu area, and that she said she was going to sleep over in Ikorodu. The following morning, he called us again that he called her phone and she didn’t pick it. We also called her phone but nobody picked it up. Since then, we had been in this trouble. By the afternoon of that day, her phone was already switched off. By that time, she had already been killed by the friend she went to visit. We didn’t know. The police at the Elere division tracked her phone to Ikorodu and arrested the man in possession of the phone. The man then named Yusuf, also known as Alfa, as the seller. That was how the truth came out.”
Abimbola, while noting that the family was yet to see Toluwalase’s corpse and that the accomplices in her murder, including the herbalist, Owonikoko, were yet to be apprehended, urged the police to ensure that justice is done in the matter. Another relative, Michael Akintunde, claimed that the suspect told the police that he “cut Toluwalase’s body into three parts.” The deceased’s father, who hails from Abeokuta, Ogun State, said that since three weeks that the Police had assured them of recovering her daughter’s corpse, the family had yet to hear any update. “Yusuf told the Police that it is the herbalist who knows where the body is, but it is over three weeks now and we are afraid that the matter would die down. The case is still at the division. We are expecting that it ought to have been transferred to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Yaba, Lagos, for more investigation,” the father added.