‘Blood spirit’ told me to attack nursing mother and behead her baby –Murder suspect(Photo)

The things we hear these days ..just unfathomable ...32-year-old Bashir Ibrahim, arrested in Eleweran, Abeokuta, Ogun State, for raping a nursing mother and beheading her baby claims a ‘blood spirit’ possessed him and pushed him into the crime.

The Sokoto State indigene,who has spent seven years working as labourer, tried as much as he could to prove that his crime was not premeditated .While his photograph was taken, he still posed and smiled.

Chatty and jovial, Ibrahim  told Punch

“I don’t understand ‘paper English,’ I can only speak pidgin,” .Ah, this spirit that possessed me did not do well at all. I just wanted to sleep with her. I did not intend to rape her.

I used to buy Tuwo (a Hausa staple food) from her. But that day (Saturday, April 12, 2014), I approached her and told her I wanted to sleep with her. I told her I would pay her N500 but she said that was too small. But when I agreed to pay N1,000, she agreed.When it was night, I followed her to an uncompleted building not too far from where we live and I told her to put down her baby. She was carrying the boy on her back at the time.
Immediately I started to have sex with her, the blood spirit just entered me. All I could see was blood. The spirit immediately pushed me to take the dagger I had on me and I started stabbing her.”She screamed as I started stabbing her. I did not know what I was doing. The woman is at least twice my size. I could not have been able to pin her down if not because I was possessed.The woman was screaming as I tried to kill her. But she later escaped and left her baby behind. I looked at the baby on the ground and he was crying. The spirit again pushed me and I held the baby down. I slaughtered him as we normally slaughter rams. I left the body there and wrapped the head in a nylon bag.”

Still possessed by the ‘blood spirit,’ Ibrahim told Saturday PUNCH that he went home, said his prayers and slept off.The head of the infant he had severed was safely tucked under a bush close to his house.He woke up the following day, he narrated, still possessed by the demon.

“By the time I woke up on Sunday morning, I was still seeing the blood. I went to take the head where I put it. There was no way you would see it and know I was carrying a human head. I wrapped it in two nylon bags and went to Mowe to take a bus to Ibadan,” Ibrahim said.

He said he went to Bode in Ibadan, a place known for its market of variety of ingredients for herbal medicine.

Ibrahim said,

 “I went to a woman who sells ingredients of herbal medicine in the market and pretended that I wanted to buy pile concoction. But she noticed that I was carrying a nylon bag and asked what it contained.I told the woman it contained a child’s head for sale. She first expressed shock but later offered to buy the head for N120,000 but the woman said she would pay N3,000 first and that I should come back the following day for N117,000. But I did not like that. I returned the money and took back the head.I did not know what to do with the head at that moment and I went to hide it in a bush. I came back to Ofada and by Monday morning, the spirit was gone. I saw the blood no more. I have three children myself. They live with their mother in Sokoto. I would not have ordinarily killed a child if I was not possessed.”

But as the murderous ‘spirit’ left Ibrahim, the police closed in on him.

He said he got home on Monday only to be told that the police were looking for him.

I did not want to run away because I know I was not myself when I committed the crime

A policeman who was part of the team investigating the case said the mother of the slain child had a deep knife cut on her neck where Ibrahim had tried to slaughter her.But the police have said his story was a carefully crafted pack of lies.

“She was actually the target. The woman was lucky to have escaped but unfortunately left her child behind.

But the spokesperson for the Ogun State Police Command, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi, said whether Ibrahim was possessed or not, the fact he would face prosecution for the murder he had committed.

He said it was not true that ritual killing was on the rise in the state or that the state was becoming the ritual killing headquarters of the South-West.