What could have passed as an ordinary initiation ceremony into a newly formed secret confraternity, The New Black Movement of Africa, a breakaway faction of the Aiye cult group, turned sour on Thursday at about 1am when one of the recruits who couldn’t endure the torture and other initiation rites he was subjected to, bolted for his dear life and ran to his mother’s house at Jakande Estate, Ajah, Lagos.
Miffed by the apparent show of cowardice by the intending recruit and the fact that he may give them up to the police, the group chased him to his mother’s residence and began to beat up everybody in sight.
At the same time, they robbed residents of the estate who were woken up by their noise.
Unfortunately for the group, the mother of the runaway boy sneaked out of the house and a placed a distress call to the Divisional Police Officer in charge of Ilasan Division, CSP Onyinye Onwuamaegbu, who led a contingent of policemen to the estate and arrested 11 members of the group, all males.
Those arrested were Godwin Victor, Benjamin Daniel, Saviour Anioffiong, Lawal Ibrahim, Shola Odekunle, Sodiq Olawuyi, Segun Fagbohun, Bashiru Lawal, Chinedu Francis, Wahab Adams and Ifarinde Adeniyi.
The police team recovered one locally made shotgun, four live cartridges, three cutlasses, one sledgehammer, 10 horse whips and assorted charms from the cult members.
In a related development, two notorious cultists, Rasheed Yusuf, aka Radical, and Abel Okwo, were arrested during a supremacy battle between the Aiye and Eiye confraternities at Akerele Street, Oworonshoki.
Meanwhile, the said Okwo was charged to court two months ago by the Command for cult-related offences only to come back to terrorise the town the more.
The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, Edgal Imohimi, has vowed that the Command will not relent in its efforts at ridding the state of members of these unlawful societies.
Imohimi, therefore, called on parents to hold heart to heart talks with their children, male and female alike, about the evil consequences of belonging to cult groups.
He thanked Lagosians for always providing the Command with information about the activities of these outlaws and solicited for more cooperation.
