Posted by By OLUWATOYOSI OGUNSEYE on
A young man, who suddenly woke up from his sleep and butchered his mother, has been held by the police.
A young man, who suddenly woke up from his sleep and butchered his mother, has been held by the police.
Sabitu Balogun, 23, blamed his action on witchcraft. According to him, several prophets had told him that his mother was a witch. He refused to refer to the victim, Simbitu Balogun, his mother, all through the interview. He kept referring to her as ‘the woman'.
He said: 'The woman gave birth to 11 children and I am the sixth. In 2001, we started having problems in my family and my siblings and I agreed that it was diabolical. We called a pastor to pray for us and he revealed that the woman was behind the woes of the family. When we confronted her, she denied it. We later went to an Imam, who said the same thing. The pastor offered to say a prayer for us. Immediately, the pastor entered the house, she started behaving strangely."
Sabitu, who dropped out from school when he was in SSS 2, said his mother attempted running away when she saw the pastor. He said: 'The pastor grabbed her and asked all of us to pray for her, which we did. She started confessing and said that she would not go back to her old ways.
We forgave her and life went on. After the deliverance service, we noticed that she refused to change. My eldest sister has been married for 25 years without a child and the woman refused to release her daughter's womb. My father that used to give us some money stopped getting jobs as a bricklayer. We went back to the pastors and they confirmed that the woman had refused to turn a new leaf."
It was at this stage that Sabitu decided to take the laws into his hands. He had allegedly woken up from his sleep on the fateful day before picking up a sharp cutlass at their Papa Ajao, Mushin residence. He thereafter, went into his parent's room where he met his mother standing. He allegedly struck his mother on the head and she fell down in a pool of her own blood.
He left the house silently. Oblivious of what was going on, Sabitu's father slept on in the room. He woke up to find his wife's corpse and a deep cut on her neck. He looked for Sabitu, who had escaped to a nearby street, to no avail. When the suspect finally got home, he told his bewildered father that he killed his mother because she was a witch.
Explaining what made him kill his mother, Sabitu told Daily Sun that he did not know what came over him. He said: 'I was not myself. I just picked up the cutlass in the back yard. I was targeting her head but it landed on her neck. It was when I killed her that the reality of what I did dawned on me. I was not sorry because she was a witch. I felt thirsty and went to buy pure water in the next street before confronting my father."
Efforts to speak with the suspect's father proved abortive as he was shielded by family members. One of his relatives said: 'You would agree with me that this is not good news. Sabitu's father is sad at the moment. He personally handed his son over to the police. We never knew that Sabitu could kill his mother. He was such a reserved and gentle boy."