An 86-year-old woman is currently battling to retrieve N19 million from a blind herbalist who allegedly defrauded her under the pretext of healing her child and making money rituals for her, reports the Head of Investigation Desk, KUNLE AKINRINADE.
The desperate attempt of an elderly woman to prevent death by snatching her children has landed her in trouble. The 86-year-old woman, identified simply as Madam Alimot, had 15 children, but they were snatched by death one after the other until she was left with only three.
When one of the remaining children was also hit by a strange illness last year, the octogenarian woman began a frantic search for healing. In the process, she stumbled on a weekly program on a popular radio station based in Ogun State, where a blind herbalist was advertised as a man with mystical powers to heal the sick and see visions about people’s life problems.
Consequently, Madam Alimot, who lives in the Mowe area of Ogun State, visited the herbalist, Owolabi Adefemi, a.k.a. Ojunu, after taking down his phone number and address at his home in Ogijo, another community in Ogun State, for a solution to the sickness that had seized her daughter.
Unknown to her, she had walked into the dragnet of a fraudster. Adefemi was said to have told the woman that death was hovering around her household and could only be averted through an atonement requiring a sacrifice with a cow.
The desperate woman promptly provided the amount requested for the sacrifice, setting off a chain of subsequent requests for additional money for unexpected sacrifices that gulped a princely N19 million.
By the time the scales fell off from the eyes of the woman and her children, she had sold her two buildings while her daughter and granddaughter had warmed the herbalist’s bed several times.
The homeless elderly woman and her children are now left to cry for justice and a refund of the money the herbalist allegedly defrauded them of.
She said she had noticed that rather than giving her a concoction for the treatment of her daughter’s illness, the herbalist kept saying he could make her rich after making some sacrifices with cows and other expensive items.
Alimot said, “He said we were taking the big cow to Agbara and later changed it to Mowo area of Badagry.
“We were asked to enter the house with our backs to the door, and we saw a well-built young man on the floor. He said the cow we gave him money to buy had turned into a man.
“He asked me to pray on the young man’s body and stab him to death, but I declined. They took our photographs, and I challenged him to take our photograph at the scene while I held the knife in my hand.
“We were shown plenty of cash of different denominations stuffed in a sack.
“Babalawo Ojunu (Owolabi Adefemi) and one old man called Agbaakin, who we met in the building, then said that we could not take the money because we did not come with the third person. We left the place without the money.
“When we went back to him, he also did not give us the money. Instead, he said the money would just appear at my house at night.
“Later, he said a monarch in Ile-Ife, Osun State, had summoned him over my matter and that a sum of N2 million was needed to pacify the monarch.
“We ended up paying him the sum of N5 million on that day, but he never gave me any charm for my sick child, and the child has not died, contrary to what he said to cajole me to sell my houses and give him the proceeds of the sale.
“I sold the house I had built with N9 million for N5 million and gave him the money. I also sold another house and gave him the money, totaling about N19 million.
“I want to collect my money from Owolabi Adefemi, a.k.a. Ojunu, and Nigerians should help me because I don’t have anywhere to call home anymore.
