‘We were recruited to kill police informants’

A suspected cult member, Chamberlain Anikam, who the police arrested last Thursday, has admitted he was one of the many assassins cult leaders in the state recruited to kill anybody the cultists consider an informant to the police. Anikam, 22, who spoke exclusively to Daily Trust on Tuesday, said his bosses in the dreaded cult […]

A suspected cult member, Chamberlain Anikam, who the police arrested last Thursday, has admitted he was one of the many assassins cult leaders in the state recruited to kill anybody the cultists consider an informant to the police.

Anikam, 22, who spoke exclusively to Daily Trust on Tuesday, said his bosses in the dreaded cult group, Aiye, ordered him in 2015 to kill three persons at the Meran and Abule Egba areas of the state.

Top on the list of those he was assigned to eliminate, he said, was one Daniel Peter, a dealer in used clothes at the Super market at Abule Egba.

The suspect said, “Daniel Peter is the head of the taskforce in the market. I was told he has arrested and handed over a lot of our members to the police. He and members of his taskforce are considered a threat to the existence of our cult group. So in 2015, during one of the initiation ceremonies we had at Abule Egba, it was agreed that some members should be commissioned to carry out the job.

“We tried to kill him twice in 2015 but couldn’t. On both occasions, he escaped. I don’t know how he did it but since then we have not seen him around the market. Someone said he must have been killed, but how true that is I cannot say.”

Anikam was one of 12 members of the Aiye confraternity that the Lagos State police command arrested last week following an Intelligence report that the cultists in the state had resolved to wipe out certain persons listed as informants to the police.

Daily Trust learnt that the cultists decided to commission the killer squad because they were irked the group was losing a lot of its members to frequent raids by the police.

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Imohimi Edgal, told our correspondent that those arrested were said to be the hitmen the cult leaders had specifically recruited for the killing job.

The police had earlier arrested Kayode Ojo, a leader of another deadly cult group in the state, Vikings, for allegedly threatening to kill the Divisional Police Officer in charge of the Oworonshoki police division, Chief Superintendent of Police Ifeanyi Owo.

The police alleged that Ojo had threatened to kill the DPO if he failed to release a gang member who was arrested during a fracas at Oworonshoki.

Edgal gave the names of the other suspected cultists the police arrested last week as Prince Chimeterem, 28; Obiora Victor, 30; Ifeanyi Uche, 23; Ufon Udosen, 21; Gbenga Ogundijo, 42; Radi Taiyo, 19; Owoyemi Toheeb, 19; and Adewale John, 23.

Others were Olawale Adams, 20; Ramon Sodiq, 28; Adewunmi Oluwasheyi, 30; Omolade Samuel, 16; Ekene Stanley, 30; Oche Atah, 30; Mandela Joseph, 38; Tunde Babalola, 25; and Yussan Aliru, 27.