‘Juju made my maid confess to stealing,’ woman tells court

by Oge Okonkwo

Law court rape

A businesswoman and the prosecution witness in a criminal trial, Abiola Olatunji, narrated to a  Lagos chief magistrate court, sitting at Ebute-Metta, how her  18-year-old maid, Iyanuoluwa Abayomi, owned up to theft through  diabolical means popularly known as ‘Juju‘, with the help of a  traditional  thief-catcher known as ‘Ajilegege’.

Mrs. Olatunji told the court that, she took her maid  to house of the herbalist where she (Abayomi) confessed to the crime after she was asked to hold a calabash with feathers by the Ajilegege at Idimu, Lagos.

The maid, Abayomi, was charged to court together with two alleged accomplices,  Christiana Arawunmi, Omolade Omowunmi, both women aged 75 . The three suspects were slammed with an eight-count charge of conspiracy, stealing of jewellery and money, and receiving stolen goods.

Leadership reports:

 She said she had to resort to the traditional method of detecting the crime, because several thefts had occurred in her house and all pleas to make the maid confess proved abortive.

According to her, all 13 people who were in the house went to Ajilegege and were made to carry the calabash, and when it got to Iyanuoluwa’s turn, she started confessing.

Olatunji, said that when they got home Iyanu  brought a wrapped black nylon in which she had hidden  N93, 000, an amount greater than the N86, 000 which was missing.

Olatunji told the court that the incidence occurred on June 7, 2012, after the memorial service in honour of her late husband.

She said that other amounts, N350, 000 and N25, 000, and some of her jewellery had been missing between March 3 and  April, 2013, and that she would have forgiven the maid  but for the statement of the third defendant (Omolade Omowunmi)’s husband, that she (Olatunji) was accusing the maid wrongly.

The defendants were first arraigned in June 2013, when one of them, Christiana Arawunmi, pled guilty to the charge of receiving stolen goods and money from the maid, and was sentenced to a year in prison.

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