A 50-year-old Beninese farmer, Poni Bada, left his country home for Nigeria, with his unsuspecting nine-year-old son, who he intended to use for money rituals.
Three other men: Ige Koselu, Benjamin Balovi and Segun Shile, accompanied the farmer to a herbalist’s home in Owode area of Ogun State, where the money ritual was to be carried out.
The trio contributed N100,000 needed to start the ritual process, with an agreement to have their share of the loot when the ritual is successful and money start to roll in.
But that was not to be, as a team of policemen from the Zone 2 Command, Onikan Lagos, who acted on intelligence, stormed the herbalist’s shrine and effected the arrest of all the suspects, while the would-be sacrificial lamb was rescued.
Vanguard learned that the nine-year-old boy, Agbe, was brought from Benin Republic in May, 2023, to work in a farmland where he was paid N5,000.
A month after, his father was said to have called his contact in Nigeria, Benjamin Balobi, complaining that the money paid to his son was too small compared to the farm work.
Father speaks
Explaining how he came up with the idea of using his son for money rituals, the father of the boy, Bada, said: “I have 10 children from three wives.
“The situation of things kept going from bad to worse. I could not feed my children. I then decided to use my last child, Agbe, for a money ritual, so that I could train the other children and have better living conditions.