“I woke up that night, rushed to her room and started beating her with a broom . When she tried to stop me, I pushed her and she hit her head on the wall and she slumped. The next thing I heard was that she was dead”.
These were the exact words of Ngofaka Iyo, a fisherman from Okrika in Ogu/Bolo local government area of Rivers state who allegedly killed his 92 year-old maternal grandmother .
Reason? The suspect accused his grandmother identified as Mrs Amachree , of being a witch, alleging that she had on several occasions attempted to take his life through witchcraft.
The suspect, a primary school drop-out, lives in the same compound with his mother, siblings and grandmother. He was said to have, on several occasions explained to his mother and siblings of always having night mares.
According to his statement to the Police, Ngofaka explained that he had on several occasion been oppressed in the dream, and he usually saw grandma’s face in the dream whenever he had the experience. He also said his, one Fanny and his brother’s wife had the same experience.
He said: “Each time I confronted her, she would plead with me to forgive her that she won’t repeat it. This has been going on for a while and I have been enduring it. But the high point of the experience was in April this year. That night, I was being strangulated in the dream. I tried to shout for help but could not. At a point I started foaming in the mouth As life was going out of me, I saw my grand mother standing over me and saying I must die. Somehow, I managed to overcome the oppression. Immediately I regained consciousness, I rushed to her room and pointed a torch at her. To my shock she was awake! She started raining curses on me, asking why I refused to die. That was when I picked a broom and stared hitting her. She tried to take the broom from me and in the process, I pushed her and she hit her head on the wall and her ankle on an iron burglary protector. She sustained injuries on her head, hand and leg from which she bled and died,” he stated .
He lied- suspect’s sister
However, Ngofaka’s account was discredited by one of the deceased’s children, Augusta Agienboye, 52. Agienboye told operatives that after the act, the suspect’s girl friend ran to her, informing her that Ngofaka had inflicted machete cuts to his grandmother.
Augusta was said to have reported the matter to the Joint Task Force,JTF station in Bolo, following which Ngofaka was apprehended and taken to the JTF check point,where he managed to escape.
But on May 14, 2014, Agienboye said she received a call at about 5pm, where the caller informed that Ngofaka had been rearrested at a diesel dump site in Bolo town b y policemen attached to Ogu/Bolo Police.
At the station his statement reportedly contradicted his earlier claim of using a broom on his grandmother. Family sources told Sunday vanguard that : “ When he realised that the law had caught up with him, he began to reconstruct his earlier statement by adding that he also threatened mama with a stick but didn’t hit her. He also added that he tried to revive the deceased after listening to the counsel of his girlfriend when he saw her in the pool of blood and took her to a treatment centre but didn’t have 5,000 Naira demanded at the centre. To ascertain his claim, operatives from the Homicide section reportedly visited the scene of the murder . But they were said to have not found the supposed killer stick . Commenting on the arrest, the Rivers State Commissioner of Police,Mr Tunde Ogunsakin, said the command would conduct a post moterm test to verify the suspect’s statement and if found culpable at the end of investigation, he would be charged to court.
