Reps propose special police team to end ritual killings

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On Wednesday, the House of Representatives urged the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to take immediate action to address reports of young girls being killed for ceremonial purposes in Nigeria.

Mr Awaji-Inombek Abiante, the congressman representing Adoni/Opobo/Nkoro Federal Constituency in Rivers State, had proposed a resolution on a matter of urgent public interest.

Leading the discussion, Abiante stated that the current wave and sustained deaths of young girls, primarily undergraduates, by their purported partners for ceremonial purposes should not be tolerated.

He recalled the recent murder of 20-year-old Justina Otuene, an undergraduate in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Port Harcourt, by Damian Okoligwe of the same university.

He also recalled the murder of Augusta Osedion, “a final year student of Lead City University in July 2023 by her boyfriend, Benjamin Best, who goes by the nickname Killaboi in Lagos; the murder of Miss Oghenefejiro Ochuko, a final year student of Ambrose Alli University, who was equally killed in August 2023 by her boyfriend; Victor Ochonogor in Benin and several other unreported cases.”

He said it was disturbing that “these killings take similar patterns of dismembering the bodies of the victims whereby their vital organs are removed and that the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are young boys who might not be working alone but with strong cartels.”

The House called  on the Inspector General of police “to set up a crack team to conduct a holistic investigation with the sole aim of unmasking the cartels behind these killings and bring them to justice.”