Three ‘Islamic clerics’ held for ‘exploiting’ women
Publisehd September 18, 2019
Police in Ogun State have arrested three persons claiming to be Islamic clerics who allegedly swindle female victims in addition to sexually exploiting them.
The suspects Aliu Abdulfatai, 50, Sule Adebayo, 36, and Lekan Olokodana, 31, were arrested following complaints by one of their female victims who reported the alleged offence at the Adigbe police station.
She accused the suspects of duping her of N70,000, and one of them also raping her.
The female victim is said to be a marketer with a real estate firm and was canvassing for subscribers when she came across the suspects.
She said the three men showed interest in buying a large expanse of land for constructing their mosque.
The Police Public Relations Officer in Ogun State, Abimbola Oyeyemi, who confirmed this in a release, stated that the suspects having got the lady to believe they were interested in buying land, soon introduced the importance of special prayers to her.
Abimbola, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, added that the suspects said they saw her in a vision being under a spell and that she needed special deliverance prayers to break the spell. She fell for it.
“They succeeded in fraudulently obtaining the sum of N70,000 from her after they lured her into their house where one of them forcefully raped her.
“On the strength of her complaint, the Divisional Police Officer for Adigbe Division, Augustine Opadile, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), detailed detectives to go after the suspects, and apprehended them while waiting for the victim to bring money they demanded from her,” Abimbola stated.
According to the police spokesman, while one the suspects escaped arrest, others upon interrogation confessed to being fraudsters.
They also confessed that swindling people is their means of livelihood while it was also revealed that one of them has used proceeds of fraudulent act to build a private school in Ikorodu, Lagos State.