The victim was a 35-year-old divorcee with five kids. The pastor, who claimed he was ordained at the West African college, Sango in 2011, was paraded alongside his accomplice, Daniel Sopeju, who also claimed to be a prophet in another church. The Ogun State Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Iliyasu, led newsmen yesterday to the crime scene, saying, the suspect beheaded the victim, severed the two hands and buried the decapitated body in his uncompleted church.
When the Commissioner of Police and his entourage, as well as newsmen, got to the scene at Papalanto, thousands of residents of the area bordering Lafarge Cement trooped out to catch a glance of the incident. Iliyasu, who supervised the exhumation of the decapitated body of the victim in the church located in the bush, said the suspect and his accomplice were arrested last week Monday.
According to him, the police had received a report of a missing person at its Divisional Headquarters in Ewekoro on Monday, 26th March and started an investigation that led them to the suspect as the last person that had contact with the deceased.
The suspect, a pastor in charge of Cherubim & Seraphim white garment church, Elebute area of Ewekoro confessed to the killing of the victim and burying her inside his church after removing her head and two hands for reasons only ‘’known to him and God.” The accused also named one Pastor Daniel Sopeju of Iyana Egbado as his accomplice.
The police boss claimed the victim was a “secret lover” to the pastor, who reportedly hacked her to death. He, however, disclosed that forensic investigation into the case has commenced, adding that the case will eventually be charged to court.
While speaking with newsmen, Ipense denied the allegation that he killed the victim, but said his accomplice, Sopeju, killed her. Ipense claimed that Sopeju led seven members of an occultic group to his house with the aim of luring him to become a member. Ipense who claimed to be teaching Accounting and Commerce at Methodist High School (Private), Arigbajo, said, the group had earlier asked him to submit names of his church members from which he alleged they eventually picked Raliat.
He says: “It was not true that I killed a woman, it was one Mr Sopeju Daniel and a woman that wanted to initiate me into their occultic group and they said that they are going to collect a ransom.
“So they collected the names of my members and picked the name of Raliat Sanni. Having mentioned her name, they asked me where she was living and I told them she was living in Wasimi. They later got her and brought her to my church.
