Posted by JIDE BAKARE, Ilorin on
RESIDENTS of Ilorin in Kwara State were last week struck with utmost fear and panic when the news filtered round the town that a madman who had been going round the town for some months now had been discovered to be a kidnapper.
RESIDENTS of Ilorin in Kwara State were last week struck with utmost fear and panic when the news filtered round the town that a madman who had been going round the town for some months now had been discovered to be a kidnapper.
Three handsets were allegedly found on the man who was attacked by a mob at Ago-market in Ilorin after he had been discovered to be a fake lunatic hiding under the guise of mental imbalance to unleash terror on innocent people.
The man would have been lynched but for the timely intervention of the police from Division ‘C' at Oja Oba who dispersed the angry crowd and seized the ‘madman' who was said to had kidnapped two children that day from their crib.
Eye witness accounts told Saturday Champion that nemesis caught up with the man who had hitherto appeared like a chronic madman with tattered dress and unkept hair with a sticky substance on which several match sticks were glued to really portray him as a lunatic of the highest order when he went to a corner of the market and took out a handset with which he was alleged to have been discussing with someone in Igbo language, in the course of the conversation, the ‘madman' who is now in police net was not aware that some people who had been suspecting his movement around the area were surreptitiously watching his activities and that a few of the people among whom were two men vast in the Igbo language were close on him where he had taken cover for the conversation.
The detective team was able to hear the telephone conversation clearly from where they hid and the two that understood Igbo language translated the utterances of the ‘lunatic' to others immediately.
According to our sources, what the man was discussing with the other end was that he had kidnapped two other children and that his listeners should meet him at the usual place at a specific time.
Sources added that the man who is now a police suspect also lamented that the business was no longer as booming as it used to be because, according to him, residents of Ilorin had become wise raising the possibility of relocating to another town where his tricks could be new and more effective for the kidnapping business.
Sequel to this, the people, who had formed a fairly large crowd, were said to have descended on the ‘madman' and given him the beating of his life.
Saturday Champion further gathered that it was an enlightened member of the crowd in the market who felt that lynching the man would not be the best in order to be able to rescue and retrieve the kidnapped children that rushed to the ‘C' Division police station at Oja-Oba to inform the police of the development.
The timely arrival of police at the scene of the incident saved the suspect from being lynched.
Answering questions from newsmen at the ‘C' Division police station where he was later detained, the ‘madman' who gave his names as Nathaniel said he hails from Edo State and that he graduated from the Edo State University, Ekpoma where he read Chemistry.
He was answering all the questions posted to him correctly and reasonably until when his statements suddenly became incoherent.
Confirming the incident, the Public Relations Officer for the Kwara State Police Command, Mr Gideon Marcus (DSP) said that the man had been taken to the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) to ascertain the level of his sanity before the police could make any case against him.
The DSP described as barbaric, the attack on the suspect saying the best thing would have been to report the case to the police instead of some people taking the law into their hands adding that if the man had been lynched in the process it would have been pathetic.
The PPRO, who lamented that the police could not arrest any of the man's attackers said that the police did not find any handset on the suspect when he was arrested.
Some people in the Ilorin metropolis told Saturday Champion that Nathaniel is not the only one of his kind in town saying there are four other lunatics whose activities put question marks on their insecurity, calling on the state government to arrest the suspected madmen on time and subject them to medical tests to detect their trickery on time before it is too late.